


per aspera, ad astra

by getthisoff



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Minor Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung, Minor Mark Lee/Nakamoto Yuta, Panic Attacks, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn, Suh Youngho | Johnny-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:54:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29216031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getthisoff/pseuds/getthisoff
Summary: and there, in the midst of the rubble and stardust, lay a man.Johnny, an acclaimed astrophysicist, is left behind a cabin in his estranged father's will.At the cabin, he merely expects to find old knick-knacks, dusty books, and things to be thrown away. Instead what he finds is better: answers to questions that had plagued him all his life, a man from the stars, and most importantly, himself.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 20
Kudos: 58
Collections: Johnny Fic Fest: Round Two





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the amazing JFF admin for being so patient with me, to N for being my cheer leader, and to my prompter for this awesome prompt. I hope I managed to do you justice; as per your request, angst was welcomed, and I gladly delivered.
> 
> Writing this was almost cathartic, in a way. This might be the biggest thing I have ever written/will ever attempt to write. Glad I managed to get it out in time– back to my thesis!
> 
> TW: Mentions of a panic attack in a Chapter 5. The relevant part will be highlighted accordingly in the a/n of that chapter.
> 
> **#JS037**

So much of life felt like searching– searching for answers to unanswerable questions. For resolutions to endings that didn’t sit quite right. For meanings to the things that made no sense.

Johnny felt as if his life was one giant question, laced with gaps to be filled, and endless blank spaces.

Little did he know, all he’d have to do was look up.

________________

Johnny was six years old when he first saw a shooting star.

“Constellations are clusters of stars that group together to form specific patterns,” his father explained. Johnny still remembers the often faraway look his father had in his eyes when he spoke of the world. From his six year old perspective, it looked like admiration and love; as if his father was mystified by the universe and the world beyond.

It would be many years before Johnny would realise that it was yearning he saw in his father's eyes. Yearning, and at times when the moon’s incandescent light hit a certain way, regret.

It was their last night at their holiday cabin in Vancouver— one of the last few holidays Johnny remembers taking as a family. His father, a devout physicist, would head out to the woods every night with a telescope in hand. He rarely allowed Johnny to tag along, but something was different that night. Perhaps it was the melancholy of a holiday coming to a close, or maybe he finally realised that it would do his son some good to spend some time with him. Johnny, young as he was, was nonplussed; he was content to be in his father’s presence, even just to sit quietly.

Staring up at a clear night sky that he wouldn’t have seen from his childhood window in downtown Chicago, Johnny looked for shapes in the bright spotlights that seemed to hang from invisible strings. He doesn’t remember seeing any constellations. _Perhaps I’m not looking hard enough_ , he’d thought to himself.

“In ancient times,” his father continued, “when there was no such thing as GPS, and people had not invented maps yet, travellers at sea would use constellations and stars to figure out where they were; how far they’d come, how much further they had to go.”

“But what if they got lost? Or what if the star is wrong?” Johnny asked. He looked up to the sky, imagining an ancient wayfaring sea man from long ago staring up at the exact same sky. A man adrift, searching for home in the heavens.

Johnny observed the way his father’s eyes danced; as if he knew something everyone else didn’t. His dad always seemed to know everything, attuned to a world that Johnny never felt he was capable of reaching– always five steps ahead of him, and just slightly out of reach.

In lieu of a reply, Johnny remembers how his father continued to peer through the tapered end of his telescope. He remembers how he quietly followed suit. He was a rambunctious child, but around his father, he always found himself calm and subdued. His father carried with him a peace that Johnny, for all that he was worth, could never emulate.

Suddenly, as quick as lightning, a star shot down towards the ground, disappearing from view before the pair could actually see impact. If Johnny had blinked long enough, he would have surely missed it.

Johnny was in awe. He shouted in glee. _A real shooting star,_ he remembers thinking. _Just like in those books Appa reads._ He turned to his father to share his excitement, only to be stumped silent.

Now, this was where Johnny’s memories got fuzzy. He no longer remembers if he said anything to his father, or if his father said anything to him. All he remembers from that point onward were two twin tear tracks painted on his father’s cheeks, his eyes closed and turned up to the sky.

But even then, memory is a fickle thing.

The memory ends with the ride back to the cabin. To this day, Johnny remembers the feeling dozing off in the front seat, eyes heavy as his head rocked gently with the motions of tyres on an unbeaten road. The fuzzy feeling of not being all there, the haze of his comforting dream-like state cut by the sound of his father’s quiet voice speaking to him.

“Remember this, John-ah,” his father began, in a voice so quiet and distant, he may very well have been speaking to himself, “the stars are never wrong. One way or another, they always lead the lost home.”

After all these years, Johnny still wonders if he’d made this up; if it had truly happened. After all– memories, like a home, or even a building, are reconstructable. Every time we return, there are new cracks in the foundation, new warps in the woodwork. The bittersweet feeling of returning to a familiar place that no longer felt the same.

________________

The first lesson one learns in Introduction to General Astronomy is that the probability of anything is always conditional, and as Johnny’s professor had told their hall of 400 students at the time, “–to never forget that,”. 

On one hand, the probability of seeing a shooting star, given that you spend every clear summer’s night at your remote cabin looking up at the night sky, is very nearly 1, meaning extremely likely. On the other hand, the probability of seeing a shooting star, given that you happen to glance up at the sky at random for five seconds one night while waiting for a train in downtown Manhattan, is very nearly 0– extremely unlikely.

Knowing this full well, and with a doctorate under his belt to back it up, on one particular evening, Johnny found himself looking up to the sky, searching. When his parents divorced at age eight and custody moved to his mother as his father moved away, Johnny remembered looking to the skies constantly, wondering if it would bring him closer to his father; if his _Appa_ was looking up to the same sky too, looking for home. Johnny willed the stars to make their family whole again. To make him whole again.

Now, at 26, and ironically an astrophysicist like his father, the stars finally listened and brought his father back into his life– just not the way he had expected. He could not have possibly predicted his father's coming home would come in the shape of bright red spots on MRI scans, and an expiry date to his life; but anything is possible, given the right conditions. Never forget that.

In spite of knowing about likelihoods, probabilities, could-haves, and general laws of the universe, when your world feels like it’s crashing down, and your foundations crumble, even the impossible suddenly seems tangible.

The call to come home to suburban Chicago was quick, simple, and efficient– “The hospital called. He’s gone, John-ah,” his mother spoke on the phone, sounding hollow, yet almost resigned. 

He’d seen it coming. They both had. Johnny spent a large portion of his twenties looking to the stars for answers they could not give. He’d look up, while down below, his father, whom he loved despite everything, wasted away due to no fault other than the fact that while the possibility of being diagnosed with cancer is 0.22 out of 1, given the right conditions, anything is possible. Never forget that.

“Okay,” Johnny merely replied. It was a phone call he knew would come sooner rather than later. At that instant, his mind brought forward the memory of his father’s eyes, illuminated by a sky so full of stars that it felt near impossible. A flash of light. A whisper of awe. Two twin tear streaks down a face that had looked so impossibly young, yet so aged.

“Okay,” he repeated. “I’ll be there in the morning,”.

________________

The sound of the kettle going off brings Johnny back down to earth.

“– and so I was wondering if you’re still planning to go? I can’t really survive these events without you, hyung. No one knows how to charm those ancient lizard people like you do. You might even be able to swindle one of them enough to give us a better grant for the project.”

Johnny looks up, dazed. “Huh?”

Johnny watched as Doyoung rolled his eyes, but had the sympathy to not chew him out a new one. “The vice chancellor dinner, hyung? For the sciences faculty? It’s next Thursday,” he replies as he goes to pick up the kettle and make coffee for the both of them, an extra cup for Jaehyun on the side. 

“Oh, uh. I’m not sure if I’ll be going, Dons.” Johnny replies listlessly, his eyes feeling raw and burning as he stared into his mug. He’d been doing alright since returning from the funeral a few months ago– going to work as usual, churning out lesson plans, supervising his final year undergraduates. He was coping well enough, and the grief, while there, had finally started to ease.

And then the message from his father’s lawyer had arrived, leaving him bereft and unsettled. Memories that had long collected dust were being pulled from the trenches of his mind, resurfacing despite his best attempts at pushing them away. A cabin. The scent of his father’s cologne. His father’s eyes. The glow of a meteor blinking across his fathers tear-stained face. A warm drive home. Uncertainty, and longing, and a lifetime of feeling like his father knew something Johnny did not.

It had all climaxed the night before when he came over to Doyoung and Jaehyun’s apartment for dinner. In between his sixth and seventh glass of wine, Johnny had burst into tears– ugly sobs that wreaked through his body, and had him wrapped up in both Doyoung and Jaehyun’s arms afterward, falling asleep from exhaustion. It felt like delayed grief– a dam that had long overflowed finally burst open. It felt good for Johnny to finally release, and while any better man would have felt embarrassed for having to have been coddled at a time of such supposed weakness, Johnny knew he could trust Doyoung and Jaehyun with his life. Johnny knew that there were hardly any other people in the world who would be willing to share his pain, his grief, as much as they would.

Doyoung stopped his puttering around the kitchen and turned to take Johnny in, his demeanor softening. Johnny felt his gaze, and he would have felt worse about seemingly being pitied, had he not known Doyoung– but he did, and he knew him well enough to know that it wasn’t pity. In the more candid moments in their decades of friendship, in between glasses of wine and shared blunts, Doyoung had told Johnny time and time again: “Hyung. You know you’re an extension of me, right? When you hurt, I feel it, and I want to take every bit of that hurt for myself too. You know? Promise me you know that,” Doyoung would claim severely, his speech slurred because two glasses of merlot always seemed to be enough to do him in. Drunk words, however, are sober thoughts.

“I promise,” Johnny would always reply.

Returning to the present, Doyoung came closer and pulled Johnny into his arms.

“Look,” he began, soothing his hands up and down the expanse of Johnny’s back, ”I know it feels heavy, and I can’t begin to understand what might be going through your head right now. But I know you. And I know that you will pull through,” Doyoung continues as he pulls out of the hug, palms moving down Johnny’s arms comfortingly to take his hands– “and I will be there every step of the way.”

Johnny nods, tired but grateful. Doyoung was his closest friend. The closest thing he had to a brother. It started in Doyoung’s freshman year, when Johnny, then a sophomore, had been paired with the younger man to be his “buddy”. What started as an awkward arrangement, over time, blossomed into a life-long friendship. Doyoung had seen Johnny through the developmental years of their lives as they grappled with their identities and desires, through Johnny's first serious relationship with Yuta (who eventually proved to be a better friend than a lover), through grad school as they both pursued their doctorates in physics and engineering respectively, and finally now: Doyoung’s engagement with Jaehyun, the blossoming of their careers as professors in the same university they’d studied in, joint research projects, their adult lives finally taking shape, and most recently, the death of Johnny's father.

The moment is broken with Jaehyun walking in mid-yawn, resurrected by the smell of coffee. “Good morning,” he mumbles sleepily to the room as he squeezes Johnny’s arm affectionately and beelines for Doyoung, gathering him in a hug. Doyoung pretends to hate it. Everyone in the room knows otherwise.

“I’m thinking of going up to Vancouver next weekend,” Johnny suddenly blurted out mid-breakfast, in between the domestic exchanges about what groceries were needed for the week and when the next electricity bill was due. 

“Oh?” Jaehyun asks, breaking the silence that followed his sudden statement, “You headed up to see Yuta and Mark?”

Doyoung remained quiet, waiting on Johnny to elaborate. He already knew what was in Vancouver, having heard many of Johnny’s stories of his childhood.

“My dad’s lawyer messaged me about a week ago– there’s this cabin the three of us used to go to when I was younger. My dad lived there after he left mom and I. He, uh, left it to me. In his will. The lawyer said I can do whatever I want with it. But most of his things are still there,” Johnny explains.

A part of him had been set on the idea of just hiring a company to clear it out and putting it up for a sale, putting the money towards his savings. But another part of him, the part that remembers a clearing in the middle of the forest and the sound of his father's voice pleads for him to go there himself. To revisit the place where some of his best, earliest memories had taken place. It as if the night of crying had solidified this idea to him. Had made it into reality. He needed closure in any form he could get, even if that meant finding it in Vancouver.

“Thought I’d go up there for a week or so. I’ve got some annual leave left over. I’ll spend some time packing the place up and stuff. Might get an evaluator to come in and check it out, see if it’s worth anything. And yeah, I’ll probably see Yuta and Mark while I’m at it.”

“I’ll come with you, you shouldn’t head up there yourself.” Doyoung says, determined. “I can get my TA to take my classes for the week. I’ll say it’ a family emergency–”

“Dons– no,” Johnny interrupts before his best friend could get ahead of himself. “I think. I think this is something I need to do for myself. Make amends or whatever. I haven't been there in so long,” he continues.

Doyoung stopped short, before nodding once. As much as Johnny knew Doyoung would be willing to put up a fight, the younger blessedly also knew when to not push. This was one of those things. Johnny’s father had always been a reserved and distant man throughout his childhood, moreover in the recent years when he came back into their lives after his diagnosis. As much as Johnny loved his father, he knew nothing about him. Maybe, just maybe, he could finally learn about his father beyond the sides he showed.

Jaehyun nodded in understanding. “Hey, you’ll let us know your plans once they’ve been finalised then? And if you change your mind about it, either one of us would be more than happy to accompany you there,” he adds. When Johnny nods with a reply in thanks, Jaehyun continues, “We can do dinner before you go. I’ve got some vinyls I’ve been meaning to pass to Markie as well if you don't mind bringing them with. And a bourbon for Yuta.”

Johnny agrees easily, looking over to see Doyoung eyeing him critically. “What about the project?” he asked, “Do you even have working WiFi there? If I come with you, I could set something up–” 

“Doyoung,” Johnny interrupts patiently, “it’s pretty much sorted already, okay? My TA is more than fine with covering for me for however long I am gone. And I’ve got the means to manage things on my end. In fact, this might be good. My dad’s got books upon books of his own notes and research that might help,” Johnny attempts to reassure. Him and Doyoung had been working on a research project together, with the aim of getting published. It was the cause for many sleepless nights and tiffs between them. 

Doyoung scoffs, looking unconvinced.

“I’ll be okay, Dons! You can survive a week or so without me,” Johnny says to ease the tension and worry on his best friend’s face. “I’m a big boy now. And besides, it will almost be like an adventure! I’ve never been to Vancouver as an adult,” Johnny jokes.

Doyoung rolled his eyes. “I suppose this means I’ll have to go to that stupid vice-chancellor dinner by myself. I’m gonna be sent to an early grave if I have to explain why the fucking earth isn’t flat to one more of our bosses, I tell you. And when I do I’m going to come back and haunt you, and then you’ll forever regret the day you left me to deal with admin by myself!”

Jaehyun simply snorted, prompting Doyoung to turn to continue his tirade at his boyfriend; “I’ll haunt your ass too, you shit!”, Doyoung exclaimed, to which Jaehyun merely shook his head as he carried on with his breakfast.

Johnny laughed, his heart filling with warmth. Vancouver might bring him answers; possibly even answers to questions he never knew he had. But ‘til then, this was all he needed: bickering with Doyoung, watching Jaehyun practice the patience of a saint; it was certainty, and while he knew little of what “home” was meant to feel like, Johnny liked to think that maybe this was it; the family he’d found for himself, the friends he had, the place he’d carved out for himself in this world. Even if it wasn’t home, it was the closest he could get to, and that was enough.

 _It can wait,_ Johnny thought to himself, sipping on his coffee, as he dove back into the conversation.

The early morning of his flight to Vancouver found Johnny in the passenger seat of Doyoung’s sedan; the younger had offered to send him to the airport.

“How are you feeling? About going back to the cabin, I mean.” Doyoung asks, eyes on the road and hands relaxed yet tentative on the wheel. Around them, outside the car, the world still possessed the weighted quietness that comes between the hours of four to six am. 

“Nervous.” Johnny replied quietly, staring out the window. The weather was starting to turn, making the morning crisp. Autumn was coming, and it would be even colder in Vancouver. “I can’t stop thinking about something my mom told me when I went back for the funeral.”

Doyoung hummed questioningly, in lieu of speaking.

It was a few days after the funeral, to be exact. The last of the relatives that had stayed with him and his mother had packed up their things and left, and it was the first time since the funeral, since the last time he saw his mother before his father’s passing even, that he and his mother were alone together.

In between bites of home-made egg drop soup and rice, his mother’s tired voice suddenly cut through the silence– “You are so much more like your father than you realise,”

Johnny halted with food halfway up to his mouth, and looked up at his mother to meet her eyes questioningly.

“I’m not saying I’m not proud of you and the career you’ve chosen, but it just amazes me. You both have always had a tendency to look to the stars as if you’ll find all the answers to your questions there. It’s funny, you know? For how little he ended up being in your life growing up, you both have so much more in common than you think,” his mother said, shaking her head with a chuckle. She then got up and moved as if she was already distracted from the conversation, starting on the washing and cleaning up.

“I feel like I never really knew him though, mama. That’s the thing.” Johnny cautioned, deciding to share candidly, worried his mother would take such a statement the wrong way. For how little Johnny’s father was involved in their lives after he left, his mother was always resolute in impressing upon Johnny the fact that his father was a good man, albeit absent, and that he always tried his best. His mother tried her best to keep up the bridges that Johnny so badly often wanted to burn. So much of Johnny’s knowledge of his father came from her words, and from the near-faded memories of his childhood. Johnny supposed that was why the funeral had felt so… odd. It was grief, and it was heartbreak, but Johnny felt he could only mourn so much for someone who felt like a virtual stranger. It was closure, but in many ways, brought to the surface so many questions that Johnny could never get an answer to– not from the man himself.

And if these questions would never be answered, is that really closure?

His mother stopped short, her back suddenly a tense line. Johnny, the mama’s boy he was, was immediately worried that he had struck a nerve. An apology was on the tip of his tongue just as his mother replied quietly as she bent over the dishes in the sink: “That makes the two of us, John-ah.”

Johnny didn’t know what to say. The conversation soon ended after that.

“So you never really found out what she meant?” Doyoung asked.

Johnny shook his head in the negative. “I don’t know if I want to know either, if I’m being entirely honest. It’s not exactly a glowing complement, being compared to a man that was never around. Being told I’ve got my head stuck in the clouds.”

Doyoung was quiet for a moment, the gears whirring in his mind loud enough to fill the silence. “Don’t take this the wrong way, and you can tell me to fuck off if I’m overstepping, but have you ever considered that maybe she didn’t say that because he was absent? Maybe it was because he was just lost? And for your mom to say something like that, it might mean something y’know? They’ve got an intuition like that. Sixth sense or whatever.”

Rather than replying, Johnny remained quiet, allowing the thought to sit, and for Doyoung’s words to hang suspended in the silence. To ruminate. There was so much too unpack and it was really still too early in the morning.

Something Johnny failed to mention to Doyoung as they continued on the car ride in comfortable silence was yet another thing that was plaguing Johnny’s mind as they drove down the highway leading to the airport.

“Ma, I know this is random but– what were dad’s last words?”

His mother looked back at him for a moment; “I’m going home,” she replied quietly. “He said he was going home, and he was smiling.”

“I hope you find what you’re looking for, hyung.” Doyoung said, breaking Johnny out of his reverie.

Johnny hummed in assent, eyes on the empty highway in front of him. The streetlights on either side of the road whizzed past, giving the illusion as if they were jetting past stars, straight into the heavens.

 _“I’m going home,_ ” his father had said.

“Yeah. I hope so too.” Johnny replied.


	2. Chapter 2

The first and last time Johnny saw his father cry, he was once again six.

Johnny sometimes thinks he’d made this memory up. As if it were a dream that his brain had somehow concocted over the years. A trick of the mind, a ghost in the periphery. He’s around six, back in the holiday cabin with his parents. It was the middle of the night, and Johnny was awake, walking through the house on quick, light feet courtesy of a full bladder.

Coming out of the bathroom in the hall, a sound from the living room caught his attention. Johnny, curious and young as he was, made his way over to the source of the sound, only to be confronted with a father-shaped figure on the couch. 

“Appa?” he spoke softly to the hunched over figure, quiet so not as to scare him.

His father didn’t seem to hear him. His shoulders were shaking, slouched as if they bore the weight of the world. Johnny’s eyes were drawn to a red covered book clutched in his dad's hand. Drops of water seem to fall on the cover, blotching the cover dark and shiny. _Looks like blood_ , his young mind supplied.

His dad was crying.

“Appa?” Johnny asked again, louder. Before he could step any closer, his father looked his way, and the look in his eyes stopped him in his tracks. 

In his fathers’ eyes swam emotions that a six year old could never fathom. A look of longing and loss that Johnny would grow into in the years to come, become well acquainted with age.

But he doesn’t know that. Not yet anyway. Johnny doesn’t know that as his mother materialises out of nowhere, pulling Johnny away and back to his room, admonishing him for being out of bed at such a late hour. 

In this dream-memory, in all its hazy quality and ephemeral nature, all Johnny processes is a book clutched like a lifeline, and a pair of heartbroken eyes.

_________________

Vancouver, as Johnny predicted, was frigid. Almost uninvitingly so.

“You’re absolutely sure you don’t want to just stay with us? You can drive up there in the morning. You must be dead-beat,” Yuta had said over the phone when Johnny had called to inform he had landed. 

In retrospect, Johnny wished he’d just agreed and taken up Yuta’s offer. Initially, he was eager to get to the cabin as soon as possible; see how it looked after all these years, if it still has the same creaky steps leading to the front porch, or if the panelling was still the same shade of muddy brown. Growing up, holidays at the cabin had felt straight out of a fairy tale– snow capped mountains in the distance, clear skies.

Now, as he drove himself up winding roads in near pitch black darkness save for his headlights, the surrounding trees looked less like the fairy-tale snowscape he had grown up with and more for what it was: cold, uninviting, isolated.

The cabin, in many ways, looked exactly the same, yet vastly different. What once was welcoming and homey looked imposing and uninviting against the backdrop of thick woods and the early evening dim. Johnny pulled the car into park, letting out a breath he had been holding for what felt like the entire 10 hour journey.

 _Welcome back,_ the wind seemed to sing. _We’ve been expecting you,_ the trees whispered.

Johnny shivered, clenched the keys his father’s lawyer had passed to him earlier that week, and made his way– the retracing of familiar steps on a seemingly uncharted path.

______________

“Dad, what do you do?” Johnny asked. He was ten, and was starting to understand the concept of jobs and professions. _“Everyone has their place in the world,”_ his teacher had told the class. _“one day, all of you will find yours.”_

“I’m an astronomer, John-ah” his father replied absentmindedly, hunched over another one of his notebooks and writing furiously as he hardly spared Johnny a glance. “I study the stars,”.

“But why?” Johnny asked, puzzled.

“What do you mean, why?

“I mean, what is there to study? They’re just stars.”

Johnny’s father stopped writing and looked at him abruptly, a reply forming at the tip of his tongue before he quickly stopped himself, instead breathing in once deeply and smiling. Johnny was too young at the time to notice that his smile did not reach his eyes. 

“You’d be surprised, John-ah. There’s much more to the stars than what meets the eye.”

___________

To say Johnny was surprised was an understatement. 

He’d come expecting disarray; his father’s old things left behind and in a mess, the house taken over and reclaimed by nature with overgrowth and critters and leaks and holes. He expected the worst, and it was this expectation that had made him feel so reluctant to come back at first.

What he didn’t expect was the house to be… fine. Clean even, if not a little musty. It was even still stocked with Johnny’s favourite ready-make hot chocolate sachets from childhood, albeit a few years past best-by date. The sole source of concern was an old mug of tea by his father’s favourite arm rest that had long gone cold, the water tepid and murky. It was as if his father had left it behind believing he would come back eventually.

Little could be said however for the air in the house that was dead still. A heavy blanket of dead air, for a house devoid of anything alive and breathing. Beneath the scent of dust and mold, the musk of the cologne his father used to wear still hung. The serendipity of it all made the hairs on the back of Johnny’s neck stand.

He set about making himself comfortable. He turned on the generator, heating, and water, settled his things, and despite his exhaustion and jet lag, turned on his favourite 80s playlist and got to cleaning. _No other way but through,_ he heard in his father’s voice.

The system was simple: things to be donated, things to be thrown away or recycled, and things to keep. The latter of the categories was scarce; Johnny was bent on making sure he didn’t keep too much, if not anything. Closure, he’d promised himself. This is about moving on. The process of culling the house of its contents was simple enough. His father hadn’t left much personal affections; old clothes had been done away, family photos and albums were kept in storage, and he even had the foresight to sell off many of his collectibles and vinyls that he so loved when he made the final move from Vancouver back to Chicago for his treatment. All that was left behind were less personal things such as rugs, linens, kitchen equipment, pantry goods. Things that could be boxed, rehomed, and forgotten.

And then Johnny found himself in the study.

When his mother and father had separated, and Johnny’s father had moved to the cabin, Johnny was somewhat aware that his father was still active in his work; producing papers, conducting research, and looking to the stars as he’d done for as long as Johnny was alive. Johnny was still in highschool at the time, and knew little of his father’s career as an academic. By the time Johnny had become an academic himself, with any vague notion or understanding of what it was his father did, his father was no longer producing papers, no longer researching. He still watched the stars, but from the window of a hospital bed rather than through the lens of a telescope.

In short, Johnny was aware of his father’s work the way one was aware of the Sun coming and going; he’d never given it much thought, until now, confronted with the study in which Johnny was sure his father spent the majority of the latter years of his life in.

Charts and diagrams were pinned to the walls. At the far left end of the room stood a bookshelf overflowing with tomes and papers and files, the wood warping and bending under their weight. By the window stood the same telescope Johnny remembered from childhood, its gold tones faded from years of use but still standing just as proud and solid. Nowadays, new tech held actual physical telescopes obsolete. Any observational astronomer would simply need to login to the relevant channels that high-powered telescopes are synced with today; the telescope, like many other things in his father’s study, simply served as a relic of the past.

His father’s desk was no different, piled high with more papers and books, an open notebook at the centre of the organised chaos, with a pen sat on top– as if Johnny’s father had left in the middle of a thought he was sure he could get back to. A thought unfinished.

Set on handling the desk and its drawers last, Johnny began working his way through the book shelf, setting a few editions here and there aside to be boxed and brought back with him to New York, certain that he might find them of use for his research. Others, he boxed for recycling, or to be donated to the local libraries.

A few things caught his eye throughout the process– old novels he remembered his dad reaching for often with their covers jogging memories of childhood holidays and summers spent by the nearby lake. Outdated astronomy journal volumes that had his father’s name penned as contributing author; bits and pieces of the man he felt he knew so little about, bits and pieces that began to weave themselves together into an image of his father: a quiet man, a reserved man, a distant man, but a bright soul with an even brighter mind, who was ripped out of his life before he even truly had the chance to understand him.

His eyes were caught by the glint of something bright in the far corner of the top most shelf, hidden unless you were tall enough or looking for it. As his hand enclosed around what felt like a pendant, images and sounds suddenly burst behind his eyes, flooding his vision as if it were in real time: the glow of a star falling out of the sky. His father’s voice. Clasped hands. The feeling of an embrace that felt like a goodbye. Tears that weren’t his own, landing on his cheeks.

As quick as the visions came, they left. Johnny found himself on the floor, head crouched between his legs. His head throbbed. He focused on bringing himself back to the present, focusing on his surroundings. He was no stranger to these sudden bursts of memories, having always dealt with them coming at odd times in the recent years. What jarred him the most was how _real_ these flashes felt. What jarred him even further was the fact that he knew these memories weren’t his. If his face was wet with tears and his breathing a little bit more shallow than usual, no one else was in the cabin to notice. No one else would know but him.

The pendant was clutched in his hand; it was attached to a silver chain. It’s weight was equal parts grounding yet terrifying. Johnny rubbed his thumb over the pendant, it’s surface rough as if it were made of granite or unfinished stone. It felt cold, and this cold felt as if it was seeping through his skin and into his bones, making every part of him thrum. He’d never seen a stone like this before, though granted he dealt more with rocks that stayed up in the sky than those that could be potentially found on Earth. 

Curiosity getting the best of him, he pocketed the necklace, intending to deal with it at a later. While he didn’t recall his father ever wearing a necklace, it obviously belonged to him at one point, and was coveted enough if the fact that it was tucked away from prying eyes was any indication. Perhaps he would gift it to his mother, or keep it for himself. Under his father’s will, it technically was now his after all. Just another thing to inherit.

Before leaving the room, the open book on his father’s desk caught his eye once again. The red cover jogged his memory– his father sat in the middle of their dark living room, tear stricken eyes, his mother fervently telling him to go back to bed.

On impulse, Johnny grabbed the notebook, turned off the lights, and closed the door to the study behind him. The necklace weighed heavy in his pocket.

________________

“So, how is the old place? I can imagine it’s a mess,” Yuta asked in between sips of tea.

Johnny hummed, feeling a bit reluctant to burst this bubble of happiness and distraction after the day he’d had. He rubbed at the pendant hanging around his neck absently, the rough texture grounding him. He’d decided to wear it around his neck, lest he misplace it. It looked good on him. 

“It’s definitely seen better days,” Johnny replied.

Mark nodded his head in commiseration. “I can imagine,” he added gently.

Johnny was at Mark and Yuta’s for dinner. The meal was lovely– they ordered in from the couple's favourite Mexican joint since neither he nor Mark particularly enjoyed cooking, and spent the evening reminiscing and catching up. Johnny was happy to see familiar faces (and have human contact in general), especially after the day he’d had; clearing out more of his father’s things, and driving around town to drop off what he’d already boxed at donation centres. He was even happier to finally catch up with the pair; the last time he’d seen them was at their wedding, and before that, at Mark’s graduation.

“He didn’t really leave much behind,” Johnny shared. “The bulk of the work has been going through the things in his study. I know it isn’t the case, but I can't help but feel as if every book, every piece of paper is important. I can’t bring myself to really throw his work away, even if it is outdated.”

“I am curious though,” Yuta began as he topped up his tea, “What have you found so far? I imagine he must have some pretty sweet first editions. You could sell them!”

Johnny snorted while Mark swatted at Yuta’s arm admonishingly. Johnny knew he meant well. Yuta was astute at striking the balance between serious and unhinged– a true mad scientist.

“Well, there’s a telescope from god knows when. I might keep that for myself since it’s more a collectible than anything at this point. A bunch of old textbooks and journals that I’m bringing back for Doyoung and I’s research. Just a whole lot of papers and general office junk I suppose,” Johnny explained, “there is however one thing. A notebook of calculations I can’t seem to wrap my head around.”

Yuta’s eyebrows raised, clearly intrigued. Yuta, like Johnny, was an astrophysicist himself, specialising in mathematical and computational techniques. Johnny had the foresight to bring the red notebook he had pocketed last night, in hopes that if it came up, he could show it to Yuta.

Mark huffed out a laugh, “Well, that’s my cue to leave y’all to it,” he joked as he got up and began to clear the table. “I’ll start on dishes while you both talk stars, kay?” he says to Yuta.

“Thank you, love,” Yuta replied distractedly, eyes already glazing over as he flipped through the notebook Johnny had brought.

“Off the bat, these look like probability calculations,” Yuta muttered lowly not a moment later. “Do you see this subset? And this series here? It's a short form for potential meteoroid trajectory. From what it looks like, he tried to narrow down the variables to get a certain day and time too, but he didn’t manage to get that far. The given coordinates do suggest he was pinpointing the probability against a specific location. It’s a pretty roundabout way of going about it, and outdated too considering we have computer programmes now that could run the same calculations in a tenth of the time. Why anyone would want to in the first place is beyond me, but it works nonetheless.”

Johnny balked. “I don’t quite understand. Are you trying to tell me that he used an entire notebook, for what? Calculating the probability of a shooting star in a random spot? That sounds like a giant waste of time.”

Yuta nodded distractedly, “Not just any place either, but these specific coordinates,” he added as he pulled out his phone, keying the coordinates into a gps app and passing the phone to Johnny. “Huh. Not too far away.”

It was a mapped out version of a field next to what looked like a body of water. The details showed it was only a 20 minute drive from his father’s cabin. Johnny, despite himself, immediately began attempting to connect the dots. Perhaps he was being presumptuous as he thought to himself, but what were the chances it was the same clearing he and his father used to go to?

“The most interesting thing is the results. It must be a dud. Easy enough to happen if your dad was attempting to do all these calculations manually.”

“What do you mean?” Johnny questioned. For some reason, his heart was racing. “You’re telling me that he found a probability for an event like _that_? You’re telling me he had an answer?”

“Yep,” Yuta replied, popping the ‘p’. “A pretty crazy one too, no offense.”

Yuta looked up, looking Johnny in the eye incredulously. “He pin-pointed the probability of a meteorite landing in those exact coordinates to be extremely likely, if not statistically certain. The math makes sense to a certain degree, but I don’t really know how he did it. Or why he would go through such lengths to find out in the first place. It’s inconsequential; it doesn’t seem to hold any real-world value, so to speak. Here, you can tell from this section of the calculations.”

Johnny nodded with furrowed brows as Yuta passed the notebook back, his pointer finger resting on the page. Sure as day, was a glaring ‘1’ underlined and in bold in his father’s scrawl. A hundred percent likely.

In that moment, Johnny suddenly remembers– General Astronomy, lesson one:

The probability of anything is conditional, but given the right conditions, anything is possible. Never forget that.

___________

Detouring to the clearing seemed like a no-brainer. As inevitable as taking one breath after another. Johnny knew from the moment he’d seen the coordinates that he would end up here after saying goodbye to Mark and Yuta for the night.

Pulling the car to a stop, he didn’t think twice about hopping out and making his way through the woods, down the familiar path his father had led him all those years ago.

“It’s a two minute walk John-ah”, his father had told him when he was six. “In two minutes, you’ll see some of the most beautiful stars you’ve ever seen,”.

Johnny’s mind was swimming– was his father deranged? Were these calculations just a byproduct of his age, and his mind rotting away along with his body? Johnny wasn’t so sure; from what he’d heard from his mum, his dad had seemed as sharp as a knife even in his last days. It didn’t make sense. Moreover, if this notebook had been left behind in the cabin, that meant his father had been working on these calculations well before he had fallen ill.

His heart continued to pound. The cold air stung his eyes, the stillness of the night glowed under the light of a gibbous moon. Cicadas sung, and Johnny’s heart raced in tandem as he powered through the foliage. _No other way but through._

As he walked through the foliage, a glimmer in the sky caught his eye.

The trails of a falling star.

Johnny couldn’t believe it, and he watched from between the trees as it grew closer and closer. The cicadas’ song increased with a fury, as if they were reaching a crescendo. The wind picked up, the leaves shaking as if in anticipation.

And then suddenly it was hitting the ground, not too far away from where he was. The sound of the impact was loud, and the silence in its wake deafening. The leaves were still. The cicadas were quiet. Johnny was certain he was hallucinating. What other logical explanation could there be?

In a fit of adrenaline, Johnny suddenly broke into a sprint. The emotions in his chest swelled; the heartache of coming back to the cabin and the pain of being confronted with the memories of his father all felt like they were about to burst out of his chest. It was cathartic even, running through the woods, as if he were running away from the hereditary qualities of his father’s aimlessness, and melancholy that seemed to follow long after his death. The pain of generational longing for something bigger, something more, that Johnny seemed to have inherited. Johnny, as he ran, longed for nothing but to scream at the top of his lungs in the middle of the clearing, to scream his throat raw until he was purged of any grief that clung to him. _No other way but through._

And then he was at the clearing. It was as beautiful and as serene as he’d remembered. His eyes were to the sky and a scream was at the tip of his tongue when his breath caught short. 

There, in the far edge of the clearing, were the remnants of the meteorite he had seen. A fallen star. Steam was still rolling off it due to the heat of impact. The dust and dirt it had disturbed in its wake had yet to settle. He could hardly believe his eyes.

_Given the right conditions, anything is possible._

The rock seemed to glow from the inside out. Johnny was sure it was merely residual heat from entering earth’s atmosphere. He approached slowly, keen to take a closer look but cautious of getting burned when suddenly, the meteorite began to crack, with glowing fissures working through the rock like veins on fire. It became so bright that Johnny had to back away and shield his eyes.

As quick as the bright light appeared, it dissipated. Johnny chanced a look up, and the meteorite had cracked clean in half.

Something on the ground in between the two halves caught his eye. A shape that Johnny could not make out. He approached slowly, heart hammering. The cicadas continued their song with a fervor. The wind now howled with the trees bending in their wake. The world around him seemed to burst to life.

His professor’s voice rung through his head like a siren. _Given the right conditions, anything is possible._

The dust around the rubble settled once again, and as Johnny got closer, the shape morphed and revealed itself.

There, in the midst of the rubble and stardust, lay a man.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Johnny does is look for a pulse.

He notes the man’s bare body, the lack of visible injuries save for a few scrapes and a bruise that already seems to be fading. There’s an almost waxy, luminescent glow to his skin. His shockingly pale hair seemed to make him glow brighter, and his face was devoid of imperfection save for a small scar under the skin of his right eye– it simply looked as if he were asleep, rather than caught in the rubble of a fallen star.

Johnny noted the rise and fall of his chest. _At least the guy was breathing._

Panic started to rise in Johnny’s throat; how the fuck did this guy end up here? Was he caught in the impact of the meteorite? Should he call the police? All these thoughts raced through the forefront of his mind, but in the back of his mind, Johnny was poignantly aware that if the man had been hit by the meteorite, he would have been dead. So how did he end up in the midst of the rubble, seemingly unscathed?

As what felt like a million and one thoughts ran through his head, Johnny was interrupted by the sound of a voice as clear as day and as lovely as any song he had ever heard.

“Pick me up,” the voice said. “Bring me home,” it finished.

Johnny looked back down at the man, noting he was still very much unconscious. Eyes closed, full lips slightly ajar and breathing deep.

 _Well,_ Johnny thought to himself, breathing heavily and adrenaline lighting his body on fire _that's my decision made for me._

And so he took off his coat, wrapping the man up as well as he could, and gently picked him up. He weighed practically nothing in Johnny’s arms. And if the feeling of carrying him felt oddly just _right_ , that was for Johnny to look into another time.

_______________

Johnny is panicking.

Okay, maybe not panicking. If anyone were to ask him, he’d simply say that he was _concerned_. Slightly worried. Unsure of what to do. Yeah. Unsure’s the word. Apprehensive, even

 _Could anyone blame me? I have what might be a very dead, very naked, ambiguously aged man lying in my guest bedroom,_ he thought to himself.

Okay. Yeah. Definitely panicking.

The drive back to the cabin was rough, for lack of better word. Johnny was certain that any point the man was going to stir awake and start screaming at him, crying abduction. How would Johnny be able to explain himself? That a mysterious voice that wasn’t his own told him in his head to pick this guy up and bring him home? That despite all his concerns and worries, something in his heart was telling him not to call the police, Yuta, Doyoung, or anyone at all. To keep what was going on a secret until he could figure out what was happening well enough; because none of this felt real, and Johnny had half a mind to believe that he was in the middle of an awful dream.

He’d carried the man from the truck into his house with a speed he didn’t know he possessed; sure, he didn’t have any neighbours at least for another mile or two, but the last thing he wanted was to be labelled as _that_ guy with a cabin in the woods.

Leaving him in the guest room bundled up in the same coat Johnny had carried him in, together with layers of blankets and a fresh change of Johnny’s own clothes by his side for whenever he decided to wake up seemed like a good enough attempt at hospitality, given the circumstances. Before leaving him be, Johnny could not help taking in the stranger’s face. He looked ethereal asleep, his cheekbones cutting impressive lines.

Johnny was floored; he’d never seen someone as beautiful, regardless of gender. Appreciating his visage and prone form one more time, Johnny felt something tug at his heart. Longing. Fear. Familiarity he could not place. Johnny would have clothed the man himself, but his brain genuinely could not process doing that for a complete stranger at this point. A vulnerable stranger. An _attractive_ stranger.

His head hung heavy with worry as he set about steeping tea. The clock on the wall showed that the time was nearing one in the morning. Truly, he was certain that at any point, his alarm would ring and all of this would have been a fever dream. A byproduct of something funky in the takeout he had shared with Yuta and Mark. He’d never even seen a falling star with his own eyes before. That, coupled with finding a literal living and breathing person in the midst of it truly did feel straight out of a poorly written sci-fi. _Things like this don’t happen to people like me_ , he thought to himself.

Getting up, Johnny began making his way to go to bed, unsure of what else to do. He could wait and see if the stranger would wake up, but judging by the way he was out, Johnny wasn’t too sure. In fact, he was hoping to himself that the stranger wouldn’t suddenly wake up in the middle of the night; having to explain the situation from the evening while feeling like he’d been ran through the mud sounded like the last thing he could do at this moment.

Passing by the guest bedroom he’d left the man in, he opened the door ajar just to check on him one more time; he still laid in the bed, bundled and asleep with his small figure engulfed by the many duvets Johnny had piled on him. _He looks sweet_ , Johnny thought to himself.

As the thought ran through his head, the pendant around his neck began to feel as if it were thrumming, making the spot it laid on his chest feel warm. Johnny picked it up as if on reflex, and the thrumming stopped. At the same time, the man in bed stirred, causing Johnny to jolt.

 _Rest,_ echoed a voice in his head; it was the same voice from the clearing. Johnny wasn’t sure what to make of it, chalking all of this up to a lack of sleep and the emotional outburst he had felt earlier that evening. The events of the evening, and the weight of the day was beginning to take an emotional toll on him. Nodding to himself, he carried on to his bed room, stripping his clothes along the way and crawling straight under the covers. Exhaustion felt as if it were seeping out of every pore in his body.

 _Rest,_ the voice echoed once again. _Rest well._

With the morning, Johnny had hoped that everything would have been a dream. As he made his way to the kitchen to set about preparing breakfast, and glanced into the guest bedroom to find the man still out cold, lying as if he hadn’t moved an inch, Johnny was beginning to consider that maybe he should have brought him to the hospital after all. His mind was racing, and at war with the little hunch in his heart, telling him to wait and see.

Reaching the kitchen, he set about preparing breakfast. A mindless task, his thoughts began to wander to the reason he had found himself in the clearing in the first place; what was his dad doing making all those calculations? What could his motivations have possibly been? More importantly, how on earth was he actually right? None of it made sense. Johnny felt beyond his depth, and his hands itched to pull out his phone and call someone.

But something continued to stop him, continued to keep him at bay. The hunch in his heart pushed him to continue with his chores. As he set out to do some dishes from the day before, he resolved with himself: as soon as he sorted out the guy in his guest room, he would call someone. Doyoung, maybe..

 _Cold,_ a voice echoed in Johnny’s head, stopping him in his tracks. It was the voice from the clearing. The voice that told him to go to bed the night before. He swiftly turned around to see if the man had woken up. When he saw that no one was there, his heart sank. Confused and his own panic rising, he turned away and continued on at the sink, scrubbing away at a pan like his life depended on it.

Johnny turned around to grab another dirty dish off the counter behind him. When he turned, there the man was, seemingly having appeared out of nowhere.

” _Jesus!_ ” Johnny screamed, the pan in his hands slipping from his grip and clattering loudly on to the floor. Johnny bent over, attempting to regain his breathing.

”Taeyong.”

”Huh?” Johnny replied, his head shooting up and his heart still racing at the shock of being alone one second and having company in the other. 

”Not Jesus, Taeyong,” the man continued, his deep, soothing voice at odds with his youthful appearance. His speech was inflectionless, his accent neutral. What caught Johnny’s attention were his eyes; as big and as bright as the stars themselves, they were beautiful. They danced with a humour that was at odds with the tone he spoke. “My name is Taeyong.”

”Uh.” Johnny replied unintelligently, at a sheer loss for words. Taeyong was still wrapped up in Johnny’s coat, his smaller frame swallowed by the fabric. His exposed ankles looked red and knobly and his feet bare. Against the dark of the coat’s fabric, his white hair was shocking, making him look otherworldly. Under the glow of the early morning sun, with his pale hair in a disarray, Taeyong looked stunning. Johnny felt warmth rise to his cheeks.

“Right. Taeyong. Hello. I’m Johnny. Please don’t be alarmed but you’re in my house right now.” Johnny replied, slowly trying to regain composure while attempting to assure Taeyong that he was not in fact sime serial kidnapper. He stuck his hand out in greeting, but Taeyong simply stared until he eventually lowered it. “I, uh, you were in the clearing and I found–”

“Cold.” Taeyong interrupted, his voice sounding almost ridiculously like the one Johnny had been hearing in his head all evening.

But that could not be; could it?

“I left you some clothes? On the bed? They’re probably big but they’ll fit. And socks too” Johnny started to ramble, just as Taeyong turned and left towards the direction of the guest bedroom, his movements graceful and his steps near silent. From where Johnny stood, Taeyong almost looked as if he was gliding.

 _Okay._ Johnny thought to himself, still feeling a little dumbfounded at how odd the entire situation was. _He’s probably had it rough and is still a little disoriented. Pull yourself together, Suh._

”You sure you don’t wanna put on some socks? You’ll be warmer,” Johnny said slowly, once Taeyong reappeared shortly after, clothed but sockless. He was under the impression that this man, Taeyong, must have concussed himself in getting caught up with the debris. _That would explain why he was acting kinda weird,_ he thought to himself belatedly. Though it wouldn’t explain the lack of clothes.

In lieu of a reply, Taeyong stood stock still, taking in his surroundings with a jarringly alert gaze. He seemed to assess the room, drinking in every detail as if it were novel. As if he’d never been in a house before. Johnny watched as Taeyong’s eyes skimmed the room, the kitchen, before landing on Johnny; specifically, the pendant hung around his neck.

Something Johnny noted: in the span of time between when he had picked Taeyong up from the clearing and now, the scrapes on Taeyong’s cheeks had vanished. His bruises were gone. He looked as good as new, like he had healed overnight.

As if they were never there.

“Look, like I was saying, Taeyong. You’re in my home right now. I found you in the clearing by the lake about 20 minutes from here. Do you remember anything?” Johnny began, trying to set into motion the process of getting Taeyong to talk and maybe give some insight into what in the fresh hell he was doing in the midst of literal galactic rubble.

Taeyong looked distracted, before directing his arresting gaze toward Johnny, eye to eye. He was silent for a while, before speaking softly; “I was in a crash.”

Johnny was at a bit of a loss. He hadn’t seen a car, or even a bike near the debris. It didn’t explain what Taeyong was doing there. Heck, it didn’t even explain why he was _naked_ when Johnny found him. 

Johnny sighed, exhaustion suddenly washing over him. He glanced quickly towards the clock on the wall, the hands showing that it was only seven in the morning. “Are you hurting anywhere? I could take you to the hospital?”

Johnny watched as Taeyong’s gaze drifted once again to the pendant around his neck. On reflex, Johnny brought his hand up to it and began to rub at the surface, the roughness grounding him.

Taeyong eyes glinted at the action. An unreadable emotion crossed his face and went with a blink. “I'm fine, really,” he finally replied, his voice taking on an abruptly sure turn.

“Right,” Johnny replied, reconfiguring. This guy was kinda weird. “Okay–”

“Burning,” Taeyong suddenly interrupted.

“Huh?” Johnny replied, puzzled. Did he not know how to speak in full sentences?

Taeyong gestured at the hob behind Johnny. Realisation dawned on him– “Fuck!” Johnny exclaimed, rushing to turn off the stove as the porridge he’d set to cook began emanating a pungent, burned smell. In his frazzled state, he registered the sound of something lovely. He turned back to glance at Taeyong.

He was laughing, the smile on his face beautiful.

Reflexively, seeing the other man smile brought a small, sheepish smile on to Johnny’s face as well. He really was hoping to come off at least a little bit more suave and pulled together. The guy may be acting a little unhinged but he was still everything Johnny had ever thought to be gorgeous, ticking all the figurative boxes Johnny has ever had with regards to what he thought was attractive.

“How do eggs sound instead?” Johnny asked, hoping that he could make a last ditch effort as salvaging whatever dignity he had left in Taeyong’s eyes.

The smile on Taeyong’s face dropped ever so slightly. “Eggs?” he asked, seemingly confused.

“Yeah, eggs–” Johnny replied. “Like, I make a pretty good scramble, if you want? Or if you’re vegetarian, I could make you some toast? All good of course, so long as you eat something,” Johnny supplied, thinking that Taeyong must be reacting adversely to eggs due to preferences.

Taeyong was silent for a moment, contemplating, before shaking his head; “I don't need to eat,”

“Uh,” Johnny halted. “Okay. How about a drink? I’ll make you a coffee?”

Taeyong’s gaze dropped. The easy smile on his face was gone, replaced by confusion and another emotion Johnny could not quite place.

“Is there something wrong?” Johnny asked after a beat.

Another beat– “I’ve never had coffee,” Taeyong replied innocently, making Johnny’s swell with affection. If he could coo there and then, he would have, his soft spot for all things cute and sweet turning his heart into goo. So what if this adult man had never drank coffee before? Johnny was about to make him the best coffee in the world.

“Well, you’re in luck– I’m an expert!” Johnny exclaimed, clapping his hands. “Get the kettle, will you?” he continued as he made his way to the pantry to pull out the bag of beans he had brought with him from New York.

Turning back, he found Taeyong rooted in the same spot. He was glancing around the kitchen confused.

“Taeyong?” Johnny asked gently.

“What’s a kettle?” Taeyong asked another beat later.

The rest of the day proved to be a test of Johnny’s patience. There was no denying that Johnny found the new addition to the cabin attractive, and the company was good though Taeyong was hardly a conversationalist– but that was it. While he was endeared, he couldn’t shake off the fact that he didn’t understand jack-shit about Taeyong’s situation. Every question Johnny had asked about his personal life was deflected. Every attempt Johnny had made to get Taeyong to realise that he was literally found naked in a pile of rubble the night before was ignored entirely. Instead, Taeyong continued to walk around the cabin, observing every nook and cranny as if it were his first day on earth. Soft bare footfalls echoed through the house as he made his way around akin to a ghost, or a rehomed cat. Johnny figured he was still in shock, or _something_. It would be the only rational reason as to why this guy was acting like this. Johnny couldn’t put a pin on it, but it was mind boggling nonetheless.

Things were on a somewhat downhill trajectory from Taeyong’s first sip of coffee, when he had not only burned the roof of his mouth, but spat the sip out. “This tastes like dirt,” he said tonelessly, while somehow looking as if the coffee had offended him personally. Coffee that Johnny had painstakingly brewed not moments earlier. 

A downhill trajectory indeed, but endearing nonetheless. Johnny pulled the coffee away from him and made him a hot chocolate cooled down to room temperature, which catered to Taeyong’s ambiguous tastes much more. 

What jarred Johnny the most was how increasingly apparent it was that Taeyong didn’t seem to know, or at the very least care, much about, well, basic everyday things– the concept of time, how electricity worked, the Internet. When Johnny set about to finally make them some food, Taeyong looked like he was going into shock at the sight. It was as if the notion of eating for sustenance was completely foreign to him.

Johnny was well and truly beginning to wonder if this guy was from another planet. It seemed to be the only logical explanation. _Whatever_ , Johnny thought to himself as he finished up boxing more things in the study, _he seems harmless enough,_ his thoughts echoed as he heard Taeyong puttering around the cabin, picking things up, observing them, feeling them, and then putting them down. In due time, the sooner Johnny sat him down and they sorted out Taeyong’s next steps, the sooner Johnny could finish packing off the rest of the cabin and heading back to New York; he’d had enough nostalgia and heartache over the past couple of days to last him the rest of his life.

“So,” Johnny began as he watched Taeyong look down at the identical bowls of pasta Johnny prepared for an early dinner. “Are you from around here, Taeyong?” Johnny asked cautiously. Taeyong had managed to evade most, if not all of Johnny’s direct questions throughout the day. Johnny figured something as simple and mundane as this would be a little more difficult to run mental gymnastics around.

Taeyong was silent for a moment, as if he was contemplating how to answer. “No, I live a bit far away actually,” he finally answered.

“Far away? You’re not from Canada then? Are you an American?” Johnny continued.

The stretch of silence on Taeyong’s part grew more pronounced. Johnny, as a result, grew frustrated.

“Look, Taeyong. I get it, you’re not much for small talk, but you do realise that–”

“Wait.”

Johnny paused; “Huh?” 

Taeyong had his eyes downcast, his gaze lingering on Johnny’s pendant. Under Taeyong’s gaze, the pendant seemed to hum and buzz, as if it knew it were being watched. Johnny clutched it tighter.

A beat more. ‘Taeyong?” Johnny finally asked again. Taeyong looked up.

Upon the two making eye contact, Johnny’s mind suddenly flooded with memories that overtook his senses– memories of a laugh that sounded like bells, the phantom feeling of a hug so safe and warm that nothing could compare, and a bright streak of light going up into the night sky. They did not feel like memories he knew; they did not feel like memories of his own.

What he saw began to warp; visions of the stars and the galaxies up-close. Visions of a heat surrounding himself in a closed and confined space. Visions of falling to the earth at the speed of sound with no way of stopping. All he could feel was fear, and dread, and most importantly, determination. Just before impact, Johnny physically braced himself, and this jolted him from the memory he was stuck in.

By the time Johnny had pulled himself out of it, he moved away from the dining table, pushed his chair back and found himself leaning over the sink shaking like a leaf and nauseous. At some point, Taeyong had come closer to him, concern evident.

A featherlight brush on the skin of his exposed forearm pulled him out of his thoughts. Taeyong laid a dainty hand on him, looking up at him with kind, understanding eyes. The simple act of another person’s touch grounded Johnny. To add to the effect, Taeyong, despite the manic and sketch vibes he did initially give off, now radiated a calmness that seemed to envelope Johnny, slowing his heart down. Looking down into the smaller man’s eyes, it felt as if Taeyong could feel every single bit of confusion and fear that Johnny felt. Beyond that, not only did he feel it, but it was as if he could understand why. Could understand better than Johnny did himself.

 _What are you?_ Johnny thought to himself. _And what was that?_

 _That was the crash_ supplied the same voice in his head.

“Do you understand now?” Taeyong asked quietly. “What you saw last night, falling out of the sky. It was me,” he finished.

Johnny stood stock still. “I don’t understand,” he began. “H-how?”

Taeyong remained silent, contemplating how to answer as he continued to look into Johnny’s eyes.

They could have been standing there for hours, days, months, and Johnny would not have noticed. For the first time in a long time, looking into Taeyong’s eyes, Johnny did not feel the constant low grade anxiety and worry he carried with him. He did not feel as if time was slipping through his finger tips, or that his mind had to race a mile and a minute ahead of his body. For the first time since his father’s funeral, Johnny did not feel the burden of being a fatherless son. With just a touch and a look in the eyes, this enigma of a man, if he could even be called a man, whom he had found in the middle of a pile of rock and stardust had tethered him back to reality.

Taeyong looked as if he was about to say something, when the sound of Johnny’s phone ringing broke the silence, and broke the two out of their bubble.

Johnny took in a deep breath; “Hi Dons,” he said quietly over the phone.

“He lives!” Doyoung shouted across the line. Johnny winced. In the background, he could hear Jaehyun asking, “Is that John-hyung?”

An awkward laugh on Johnny’s end– “He lives indeed,” he says, to which Doyoung merely scoffs.

“How are you, hyung? Why haven’t we heard from you since you left, Doyoung's been sick with worry!” Jaehyun practically screeches through the tinny phone speaker from whatever corner of the room he was screaming from, to which Doyoung admonished “Have not!”

Johnny couldn’t help but smile– it always felt as if no time had passed at all when it came to these two.

“I’ve been okay. Tired, but okay,”

A shuffle, and then Doyoung’s voice, quiet and concerned– “Are you okay hyung? I spoke to Yuta; he didn’t go into much detail but he mentioned you seemed a bit… distracted, over dinner the other night,” he continued softly. “Is everything okay?”

Johnny took a look at Taeyong, who was watching him speak over the phone with rapt curiosity. Johnny walked away, finding himself in the study as he began to reply to Doyoung, filling him in on the events of the past week; what he had to get done, the books and materials he had found and intended to bring back to New York with him. In all this, for some reason, he could not bring himself to talk about the weird visions, the red notebook of calculations his father had made, the strange but beautiful man who was wearing his clothes and eating his food and had spent the night. At the other end of the line was someone who had seen him through his worst, ensured that he was fed and functioning in the days after his father’s death. Doyoung knew him through and through, which made it all the more puzzling to Johnny himself why he felt fear in telling Doyoung the extent of what he had been actually experiencing here in the cabin, _his_ cabin in the hills.

Johnny caught sight of the red notebook on his father’s desk, where he’d left it behind after coming home from Yuta and Mark’s. As Doyoung continued on the other end of the line, updating Johnny on the happenings within their shared circles in New York and the most recent developments in their research, Johnny’s mind wandered. The visions, the calculations, the man from the skies– none of it made sense to Johnny. Why now, of all instances, when he was at his most emotionally vulnerable, did life choose to make him question reality further? After years of not knowing his father, Johnny could not in good conscience leave the stones he had flipped unturned without sticking around to find out what lay beneath. Every passing day felt like a day closer to understanding the lost years– the years in between his young childhood spent with his father around, and now: his father gone.

“Doyoung,” Johnny interrupted, stopping him in the middle of his tangent about an intern who fucked up the only working printer on their floor, “I don’t think I’ll be coming home this weekend,”

SIlence on the other end.

“I’m gonna stick around here a little while more, maybe an extra few days,” Johnny continued, not waiting for Doyoung’s reply. “There’s still a lot to be done. I kinda wanna get a feel of the cabin a bit more, prepare some ideas for what I can do with it moving forward,” he lays on a little thick, knowing full well that Doyoung likely won’t buy it, but he grapples at strings anyway. He knowsthat lying to Doyoung was pointless, and its evidenced as much in the way Doyoung, after a beat, simply hums across the line.

“I figured as much, hyung.”

Another beat.

“You know, I was gonna wait until you came home to tell you this; heck, I might not have said this to you at all, but I want you to know that I’m proud of you,” he suddenly continues.

Johnny, for all he’s worth, suddenly feels the wind rush out of his lungs. A golf ball of emotion wedges itself in to his throat at the kind words of his best friend; tenderness and honesty lacing his every syllable.

“You don’t have to say anything back, but I just wanted you to know. I say this time and time again– I can’t imagine how difficult this entire process must be for you, and to face it all by yourself as well? You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for, hyung.” Doyoung finishes, his tone so matter of fact that it left no room for Johnny to argue. Doyoung sounded so sure of him, as if Johnny’s strength was as certain as the rise and fall of the Sun. Johnny hadn’t realised until then just how much he needed to hear Doyoung’s soothing words. Words which so many often seemed empty, but Johnny knew that with Doyoung, they were an indisputable truth.

Johnny mumbled a thanks, his nose sniffling. Doyoung was kind enough not to question how thick Johnny’s voice sounded, how he knew the elder was holding back tears.

“There’s so much here, Dons,” Johnny said after a moment, “so much of him. So much I still don’t understand. I don’t feel ready to leave yet,” he finished, choosing to omit the largest factors for his choice to stay: the red notebook, the man sitting at his kitchen table.

“Take your time, hyung,” he replied. “We’ll be here when you come back.”

They caught up a little bit more over the phone. Doyoung asked to shift the call to video, wanting a tour of the house. Unthinkingly, Johnny did so, walking Doyoung through the rooms of the house. Reaching the kitchen, he was excitedly showing some antique cups when Doyoung interrupted– “Hyung, who’s that?”

Johnny stopped, blood turning into ice. Doyoung had seen Taeyong.

Taeyong, adding fuel to the fire, approached the phone and looked into the screen curiously, personal space suddenly a concept lost on him. “Hello,” he said softly, in that sweet voice of his. “I’m Taeyong,” he continued, peering into the camera with his big eyes, getting so close to the screen that Johnny would have found it hilarious if his heart wasn’t beating a mile a minute at the certain death he was about to face at the hands of Kim Doyoung. 

“Hi Taeyong,” Doyoung replied slowly, eyes wide with all the questions he was not saying out loud, “I’m Doyoung.”

Johnny watched as the two peered at each other for another moment, before Taeyong suddenly turned and walked away, walking towards the window to peer out into the waning daylight.

In lieu of saying anything, Doyoung simply raised an eyebrow in question.

Johnny panicked inside, thinking of a way to explain; “He’s my neighbour!” Johnny blurted out. If Doyoung’s eyebrow could have gone up any further, they would have merged with his hairline. “You said you don’t really have any neighbours,” Doyoung questioned.

“Yeah, he lives a little far away but we bumped into each other while I was on a walk last night,” Johnny continued to fib; it wasn’t entirely untruthful– he did meet Taeyong last night, just under very different circumstances from what he was letting on. “He’s offered to help me get some furniture out of the house,” he finished off, hoping by some miracle that Doyoung would just accept his excuse and move on.

Doyoung simply hummed, clearly unconvinced but willing to let it go; “He’s pretty,” is all he commented, before jumping on to the next topic.

They continued to chat for a few more minutes, shifting back to voice call. Jaehyun got on the call, and Johnny talked about his dinner with Yuta and Mark, as well as updates on how they were doing and when he would see them again.

“Oh! By the way hyung,” Doyoung suddenly added as they were about to end the call, “there were reports of a meteorite near the part of town you’re in right now. They haven’t been able to find any debris, but there are some reports that it actually made impact– did you see it by any chance? I’m sure you would have gotten a good view with how clear the skies must be from your cabin,” Doyoung said offhandedly. Johnny could hear him puttering around in the kitchen, probably making green tea.

From where he was sitting at the kitchen table, Johnny could see into the living room where Taeyong was still standing by the window, looking up into the clear evening sky, watching the moon rise with rapt attention.

_Given the right conditions, anything is possible._

“Yeah,” Johnny replied a beat later, slowly. “I think I did see it.”

What surprised Johnny the most was how easy it was to talk to Taeyong now that the man had nothing to hide, so to speak. Taeyong, over the course of the next few days day, had grown more talkative and inquisitive, asking Johnny all sorts of questions about him, about Doyoung, about the world outside the cabin. The more they spoke, the more Johnny realised how witty and unintentionally funny Taeyong was, his reactions to Johnny’s stories endearing. The way he shifted from serious and invested to completely distracted in the blink of an eye amazed Johnny to no end. When Johnny decided to show an old photo of his childhood dog, Taeyong looked near tears, cooing at how cute the animal was. _He’s sweet,_ Johnny thought to himself. _A little obtuse, but so very sweet._

From what Johnny understood, Taeyong seemed to have a general understanding of how civilisation and life on earth worked, but basic understanding of concepts such as jobs and trade seemed to elude him. “We don’t really care for these sorts of things where I’m from,” he had joked. When Johnny boldly asked where it was he actually came from, Taeyong chose not to reply; instead, he simply smiled.

It seemed Taeyong enjoyed the food Johnny had made for the both of them well enough, though he admitted to not really understanding the point of food in the first place.

”I don’t really need to eat,” he had explained breezily, as if he were explaining the weather.

“Well, how do you get energy then?” Johnny teased, playing along. “Beauty sleep? Is that it?”

Taeyong tilted his head to the side, laughter in his eyes; “Stars are their own source of energy,” he simply said.

Johnny was floored. He didn’t say much else after that.

On the same evening after his phone call with Doyoung, before turning in for the night, Johnny handed Taeyong a change of clothes and a towel. “You can take a shower if you want, freshen up before bed. Everything you need is in the bathroom.”

Taeyong nodded, contemplating, before asking seriously, “Johnny, may I stay with you for a while? Until I figure out my next step,” he added.

Johnny was admittedly still confused. On the surface, it must seem as if he’s accepted the fact that there is life beyond what is known on this earth quite easily; and maybe he has, considering his scientific background has always taken upon the stance that anything is possible until proven otherwise. That being said, it didn’t discount from the fact that he was still reeling, still in shock, and quite certain he was in for some sleepless nights. Nevertheless, he took it in stride.

“Sure, man. I’ll probably stay on here for another week. Get some things done. You’re welcome for as long as you need in the meantime,” he replied.

Taeyong nodded in thanks, moving to leave when Johnny decided to take a leap and ask– “Is there a specific reason why you’re here?” Johnny questioned, attempting to reconcile with the fact that Taeyong has asserted that he comes from “outer space” or whatever; Johnny’s not one to judge. 

Taeyong was silent for a beat, looking at Johnny with those big, bright eyes of his. Under the dim light of the spare bedroom they were in, his eyes looked as if they glowed.

“You will know soon,” was all Taeyong replied. Simple. Quick.

Johnny nodded, respecting the fact that if all this was indeed bullshit, it did buy Taeyong some time to concoct whatever convoluted story he chose. And if it was in fact the truth, and Taeyong was in fact from outer space and sent to earth for a specific reason, and everything Johnny knew about the fabric of reality was about to be ripped to shreds with this newfound realisation, then at least it bought Johnny some time to mentally prepare for his world to be tilted on its axis.

Nodding, Johnny decided to leave it at that. “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll leave you to it then,” he added, making a move just as Taeyong began to strip right in front of him.

“Woah!” Johnny exclaimed, covering his eyes in shock. The expanse of Taeyong’s taut torso burned behind his closed eyelids.

Taeyong snorted– “People on this planet seem to have a misplaced sense of shame,” he teased. “You know what your body looks like, what difference does it make from mine?”

For lack of better word, Johnny simply shook his head and kept his eyes firmly planted on the ground where all he could see were Taeyong’s bare feet. He watched, cheeks flushing, as the sweatpants he had lent Taeyong pooled to the ground, followed by the t-shirt.

When he finally thought it safe to look up, he caught a glimpse of Taeyong’s unclothed back just before Taeyong closed the door to the bathroom behind him– all corded muscle and sinew and blemish free skin glowing under white light.

Johnny felt the heat in his cheeks spread to the tips of his ears. He picked the old clothes up from the floor and made his way out of the room, leaving Taeyong be for the night.


	4. Chapter 4

Johnny remembered little from his father’s last days.

He remembers how stressful it was for his mother, how her texts and calls had increased in frequency, relative to the regression of his father’s condition. He remembers throwing himself into his work to avoid having to think about the fact that soon he would be fatherless; this time, for good.

On one particularly difficult morning, Johnny remembered thinking to himself that maybe his father leaving him and his mother when he was younger was a blessing in disguise; not knowing what it was like to have him around for all those years had prepared him for when the time would come where he would be gone for good. It was a sick way of looking at it, but it was the only way Johnny felt he knew _how_ to look at it.

He’d had this same thought the last time he actually spoke to and saw his father in the flesh, when he visited Chicago for a weekend to check in on his mother. Walking into the hospital bedroom where his father had essentially set up camp, he sat by in silence as the machines surrounding the man meant to be his father whirred, working hard to keep his father alive.

“John-ah,” his father had whispered hoarsely when he finally woke up and saw his son sat by him.

“Hi Dad, how are you?” Johnny asked quietly, not really making direct eye contact.

His father hummed. They sat in silence together for a bit, until his father suddenly spoke.

“I'm going home, John-ah,” his father slurred slowly. His eyes looked glazed, as if he were seeing something that Johnny could not.

Johnny leaned over and placed a chaste kiss on his father’s forehead, closing his eyes. “I love you,” he whispered to his father, lips close to his temple. He did not get a reply back.

Letting go of his father’s hand and his eyes still closed, Johnny walked out of the hospital room without a backward glance.

Three weeks later, Johnny’s mother called. His dad was gone.

_________________________

A loose routine was slowly set in place; in the mornings, Johnny would wake up to find that Taeyong had prepared his coffee for him just the way he liked it. When asked how he knew, Taeyong simply answered, “I watched you make it. It’s easy enough to learn,”.

The afternoons were spent with Johnny continuing to work his way through packing the house, or getting the odd repair job done here and there. Taeyong stuck by his side with little to no complaint, often opting to just be quiet and observe. In the instances where he felt particularly chatty, he would go on tangents of questions on how some “human practices”, as he so liked to call them, worked. At some point, Johnny had sat Taeyong in front of his personal laptop, showed him the ropes, and left him be for an afternoon. By the time he had come back from getting more groceries, he had found Taeyong in the kitchen attempting to copy a cooking tutorial he had stumbled upon on Youtube. Johnny was endeared, and simultaneously thankful for the fact that the fire alarms in the cabin no longer worked; there had been quite a fair bit of smoke when he came home.

What surprised Johnny the most over the days he spent with Taeyong was the ease with which spending time with him came. Now, Johnny’s by no means an introvert. He thrived off of social energy and being around people. However, when push came to shove, Johnny was also poignantly aware of just how selfish he could be sometimes; he didn’t like to share food, he always preferred having things his way, and when it came to living with people or staying with someone else for an extended period of time, he would always find himself feeling sick of the company in no less than a day in.

With Taeyong, however, it felt different. Time spent with Taeyong brought a new meaning to the term “comfortable silence”. With Taeyong, Johnny felt grounded and at ease, his presence and personality calming without even trying. Taeyong was not one for empty phrases, nor for small talk. He chose his words carefully, and often with intent– he did not feel the need to fill awkward pauses with meaningless words, but when he did choose to speak, he spoke well, and with a passion and curiosity that Johnny admired. He had a quiet comtemptalition to him that Johnny had always aspired for himself.

 _With Taeyong here, this cabin feels like home_ , Johnny thought to himself.

At the forefront of his mind, he acknowledged the fact that Taeyong was special. Different. He said and did things that Johnny could not attribute to anything he had ever personally experienced before. Taeyong’s every action and his very being continuously reinforced the fact that he was not of this earth– but still, Johnny held his apprehensions close to his heart, choosing to wait. Taeyong said he would know soon, whenever that time may be. Taeyong often made vague references to intergalactic travels and his life before coming to earth constantly, but when Johnny tried to prod further for the truth, Taeyong would easily reroute, and turn the question or conversation back on Johnny. He challenged Johnny with his introspective questions on the human psyche and motivation. He left Johnny dumbfounded when he asked the most basic things. He embarrassed Johnny the first time he asked Johnny what porn was, after Johnny had left his laptop with him for yet another afternoon. He was unlike anyone Johnny had ever met. This man, regardless of his questionable origins and farfetched story, made Johnny feel a happiness he had not felt since he was a child visiting this very cabin, attached to his father’s coat tails.

Johnny had never felt so alive, so human, around someone else. It was almost ironic.

“Do you feel emotions?”Johnny suddenly asked Taeyong.

Taeyong contemplated the question for a beat; “I understand what they are,” he began slowly, “and what some of them connotate– fear and anger are rooted in basic fight or flight response, and is the body’s reaction to stimulus. It ensures survival. Love and happiness aid in reproduction, which is also once again rooted in survival and maintaining species” he explained further.

Johnny stopped, giving his full attention to Taeyong. “That doesn’t answer my question though,” he interrupted quickly, not wanting Taeyong to go down a Darwin-esque rabbit hole “...do _you_ feel those things?”

Another beat of silence. “I suppose I do,” Taeyong finally answered. “I know I feel things, even if I sometimes cannot put a finger on what I feel exactly. I’m still learning, I suppose. I learn from you a lot, you emote very much. My kind don’t really consider matters of the heart very often, though there have been one or two outliers” he finished offhandedly, staring off into the forest outside the kitchen window.

Johnny chose not to prod further, his mind choosing to focus on the fact that Taeyong “learns” from him– _what does he see? Does he see the endearment in my eyes? The way my smile for him is often small, and private? Can he sense the hope that continues to bloom in my chest?_

Johnny wants nothing more than to squash the seed of affection that has began to take root in his heart. In such a short amount of time, Taeyong had taken root. Johnny finds himself at night begging that seed not to bare fruit, as he imagines Taeyong in the other room, lying in bed five paces away, beautiful and lovely and so out of reach. Regardless of how this time between them ends, of which Johnny was certain it eventually will, Johnny already knew in his heart of hearts that he would not be able to forget Taeyong. Nor would he want to.

Johnny also learned that Taeyong was surprisingly spontaneous; this became particularly evident when one evening, Taeyong suddenly came up to Johnny with a proposition.

“I want to know what swimming feels like,” Taeyong says out of the blue.

Johnny smiled, amused. “Where’s this coming from?”

“I’ve recently learned of the Olympics. A truly remarkable feat for humans, by the way. Anyway, I read about all the different sports there are, and am most intrigued by swimming, I watched those video things as well. It looks very interesting. I think I would enjoy it.” Taeyong explained, his eyes lighting up at the thought. Johnny couldn’t help thinking how lovely he looked like this, eyes bright with innocent wonder.

Johnny wanted to keep feeling like this. He wanted to continue feeling alive. _Fuck it,_ Johnny thought to himself, deciding to throw caution to the wind for once. The seed in his heart had taken root and begun to grow from the moment Johnny laid his eyes on Taeyong in the clearing.

“Well then,” he began as he started making his way to grab a few towels and his car keys off the counter, “it'll be cold as hell, but let’s go for a swim,”

The smile on Taeyong’s face made it all the more worth it.

_Perhaps this is a mistake,_ Johnny thought to himself.

Watching Taeyong float on the surface of the water (because of _course_ he was a natural swimmer), eyes closed and chest rising and falling slowly felt like torture. The way the ambient light of the moon reflected off the damp of Taeyong’s skin made Johnny want to close his eyes, feeling wrong for even looking. Taeyong wore nothing but a small pair of shorts Johnny had found from his younger years that somehow managed to fit the other's smaller stature– it was infuriating how attractive he looked, wearing banana print board shorts that barely went past his mid-thigh; Johnny felt as if he was experiencing a small descent into madness. How could he not, when the other man genuinely looked as if he was not of this world?

The worst part was that it seemed as if Taeyong knew; as if he were enjoying seeing Johnny look so flustered, so out of his depth.

Johnny didn’t want to project his own feelings on Taeyong, nor did he want to assume– he didn’t know how much Taeyong understood about desire. If what he seemingly understood of humanity and the human psyche was anything to go off on, it could have been presumed that Taeyong would know close to nothing about the charged energy between them. However, as Johnny stole glances out of the corner of his eye every time he resurfaced, it was electricity straight down his spine every time he saw Taeyong looking back. 

Johnny was no stranger to the chase; he was astute enough to be familiar with desire. It’s just... he didn’t expect to be wanted by Taeyong. Beautiful, innocent, intelligent, otherworldly Taeyong.

The next time Johnny resurfaced, pushing his hair and water out of his eyes, he opened his eyes to find Taeyong abruptly closer. Close enough that with just one little push, Johnny could just–

“Humour me,” Taeyong began, the light of the sky glinting across the whites of his big, bright eyes.

Johnny smirked, opting to play it cool in hopes of masking the flush in his cheeks which certainly wasn’t from the cold.

“I’m at your service, good sir,” Johnny joked, lowering his head in a mock bow.

Johnny stilled as he felt finger tips at his chin; Taeyong was pulling his face up to look at him head on– “I want to try something,” Taeyong uttered slowly.

Johnny had gotten used to their height difference over the past week. He’d grown accustomed to having to look down to meet Taeyong’s gaze halfway. However, meeting Taeyong's eyes head on like this felt significantly better, as they floated in the dark waters of the lake near his cabin, their clothes on the embankment, the moon full and bright in the sky, and the song of cicadas echoing through the mild breeze, the forest around them sounded alive.

Everything about Taeyong was arresting– his mere presence engulfed Johnny every time he walked into a room. Looking at him head on like this, Johnny studied his face; his thick eyebrows that framed his eyes with an intensity that juxtaposed the kindness of his irises, to the slope of his deep cupid's bow, followed by the fullness of his lips that glistened with lake water. Johnny felt his eyes wander. Taking Taeyong in from this vantage point felt like a blessing; as if whatever deity above was smiling down upon him, and that smile was echoed in the corners of Taeyong’s lips. Under his watchful gaze, with no one around them for miles on end and the city even further away, Johnny felt like they were the only two people in the world.

It felt like magic.

“I was on the internet earlier,” Taeyong began lowly, voice soft as he raised his hand from Johnny’s chin to brush the hair out of Johnny’s eyes and tuck them behind his ear, “and read something particularly interesting.” he added, his fingers now gently caressing the slope of Johnny’s jaw, before making their way down, down, down, finally resting lightly right at the base of Johnny’s neck, at the juncture where his chest began. Taeyong’s fingers were ice cold from the water, but on Johnny’s skin, they left trails of flames. Johnny felt as if he was burning from the inside out. Call him dramatic, but he was certain that if he were to go now, he would find no better way to die than this: at the hands of the most beautiful man he had ever encountered.

“Certain actions that humans do or have done unto them invoke physiological responses,” Taeyong continued. His fingers tapped lightly at Johnny’s chest. Johnny was sure he was teasing him, tapping to the rhythm of his rapidly increasing heartbeat. Taeyong’s fingers danced across Johnny’s collarbone, moving to hold on to the pendant around Johnny’s neck and giving it a quick but gentle tug, until finally finding a home in the slope between his neck and shoulder.

“Touch releases a few types of hormones– oxytocin, dopamine” Taeyong added, his other hand now coming up to rest on Johnny’s other shoulder. The weight of both his hands felt grounding; as if Taeyong knew that if he were to let go of Johnny right now, he would simply float and fly away, his heart a hot air balloon in his chest. “These then trigger your brain to make you feel certain emotions. Good emotions. Emotions of happiness, trust, love, lust,” he continued. He used the hold he had on Johnny’s shoulders to draw closer, until they were practically chest to chest. With Taeyong’s lithe, muscular body flush against his own, Johnny felt himself short circuiting– he was certain Taeyong could feel, among other things, his heartbeat through his own chest at this point; Johnny wasn’t sure whether he wanted to die of embarrassment or joy.

“What are you trying to say?” Johnny finally found his voice, his words coming out hoarse, as if he had been stuck in a desert for years, desperate, and Taeyong was a tall glass of water within arms reach. Johnny descended further into madness.

Drawing ever closer until even water could not slip though the space between their bodies, Taeyong’s lips brushed against the shell of Johnny’s ear as he answered, “I’m saying that among other things, I trust you, Johnny Suh,” he finally finished, before suddenly pushing off of Johnny’s shoulders, moving away to float on his back and stare at the skies once again.

Johnny exhaled loudly and pushed his hair back on reflex, watching Taeyong with wide eyes as the latter looked up to make eye contact with him one more time. A smile at the corners of his mouth. Light and mischief danced across his face.

Johnny felt done for.

Finishing up after what felt like the world’s longest, most satisfying shower, Johnny walked across the hall into his room with his towel slung lowly on his hips. As he did so, he caught Taeyong’s eye, the other man towelling his own hair in the guest bedroom. His face was flushed a lovely pink from the warmth of the bathroom steam. The shirt he wore, Johnny’s shirt, was once again too big, engulfing him and falling off his shoulders. He did away with the sweatpants Johnny had lent him, opting for shorts instead. Johnny opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Internally, Johnny debated with himself. If he took this leap of faith, only to find he had misread the entire situation, he would feel mortification and guilt beyond comparison. On the other hand, if he didn’t take the leap of faith, he would hate himself every single day for the rest of his waking life for not having the courage to try.

Finally coming to a decision, Johnny decided: he’s never been cited as brave, but for once in his damn life, he was going to take a chance; if not now, when?

Sustaining eye contact with Taeyong until the very last possible second, he made his way into his room, leaving his bedroom door slightly ajar. He dropped the towel slung on his hips to the floor and crawled into bed, nestling himself under the covers. His attempts at getting comfortable were a mere ruse to hide the way his heart felt as if it were about to beat out of his chest. He could feel the blood in his head roaring in between his ears.

A pause.

Taeyong’s shadow cut through the light that leaked through the slightly open door.

A pause.

The door began to open ever so slowly, until Johnny saw the backlit shape of Taeyong’s figure. His feet were bare again.

A pause.

Taeyong approached the bed slowly, like a deer coming to water. Johnny held himself still, worried that any sudden movements would scare the other away. He hardly dared to breathe, worried that the rise and fall of his own chest would be too abrupt.

The bed dipped as Taeyong drew closer. The heat of his body warmed the surface of Johnny’s own skin. In the dim of the night, their eyes met.

Johnny was well acquainted with the feeling of wanting something with every fibre of his being. He knew the phantom weight of desire like the back of his own hand; the desire for love and to be loved had become the running theme of his life, often making him feel like the butt of a joke he was not privy to.

In this moment, however, with his skin against the skin of another, and eyes that shone like stars looking at him with lust, adoration, and _trust_ , Johnny felt just how it feels to want, and to be wanted so badly in return.

If not now, when?

_______________________

Johnny woke up abruptly to the sound of his name being called. He opened his eyes to be greeted by Taeyong’s face stoic and mere centimeters away from his own.

”You said you found me.” Taeyong suddenly spoke, unprompted.

”Huh?” Johnny asked, feeling disoriented, “Yeah,” he paused, mind slowly waking up and catching up with reality. The man he had spent last night with seemed to have disappeared in his sleep, instead replaced by the man whom he had found in the middle of the madness. If it weren’t for the way his body ached, or the way phantom marks littered Taeyong’s chest, and their respective lack of clothing, Johnny would have assumed that last night had been nothing but a fever dream. A beautiful, gut wrenching fever dream. “Yeah,” he repeated, “there was a meteorite, and it crashed, and when I got closer you were just lying there–”

”We need to go back,” Taeyong interrupted. “There’s something I need to show you. It’s important.” Taeyong quickly adds as he gets out of the covers and crawls to sit down at the foot of the bed. Pulling the shirt he had worn last night off of the floor, he put it back on slowly, shivering at the cold of the fabric on his skin. The giant collar showed off the dainty slope of his neck, with the hickies Johnny had left behind peeking just so. His hair looked sleep ruffled. If it weren’t for the aura he was radiating in waves right now, Johnny would have wanted for nothing but to pull him back into bed and cozy up, starting the day slow– but the moment had passed; when, he could not say.

“I get the impression you don’t really believe me when I say that I’m not from here,” Taeyong added. The finality in his tone left no room for argument. The shift in demeanor from yesterday’s playfulness and last night’s desire was throwing Johnny off entirely.

“Well, can you blame me? As far as I’m concerned, aliens were not real until a few days ago.” 

“I’m not an alien,” Taeyong snorts, having the gall to sound offended.

Johnny chose not to reply.

“I can show you better than I can explain,” Taeyong finally added.

Johnny was apprehensive. He had been pushing and pushing at Taeyong for the truth for days, and now, with the truth confronting him like this, Johnny was scared. Scared that the truth would burst whatever bubble of bliss and ignorance he had created for Taeyong and himself, holed away in this remote cabin in the woods that he had inherited from his recluse father. To burst this bubble would be to burst the hedge of protection he had carved around his heart over the past few days. To know the truth would be to be brought back down to a reality he longed to escape; a reality that Taeyong was not here to be his saving grace, his new purpose. A reality where Taeyong was not his to keep.

Importantly, Johnny knew that in his heart of hearts, he was a man of science; hard facts, empirical evidence, and marginal room for error were the backbone of who he was. To entertain something as out of the park as this, when he already had so much on his plate felt like a mockery of everything he was. Yet, simultaneously, as he continued to sustain eye contact with Taeyong, a small part of him knew. Knew that this man, if he be a man at all, was not what he appeared to be. Perhaps the least he could do, not just for Taeyong but for himself, was to afford him the opportunity to tell him the truth.

”Trust me,” Taeyong spoke lowly, coming in closer to look Johnny dead in the eye. He spoke and asserted with a conviction that Johnny didn’t expect. He brought his hand up to Johnny’s chest and laid it flat, as if he could physically reach in and calm down the storm brewing in his heart. The tips of Taeyong’s fingers tugged at the granite pendant that lay flat right above where his heart would be. 

Perhaps it’s worth noting then, in the days, months, years to come, when Johnny looks back on this moment and remembers the glint in Taeyong’s eyes and the consistent tug that had taken root in his chest, it was at this moment he knew he would follow this man anywhere, would do anything that was asked of him. Even if he wasn’t aware of it yet; even if he did not know it at the time.

”Okay,” Johnny dissented quickly. He was quick to agree because to a certain extent, he already knew. As much as he did not want to believe it, he knew that today was going to be the day he learned things he’d never known were possible; “Okay,” he repeated.

The clearing was much more beautiful in the daylight.

Under the high noon sky, accompanied with a light breeze, the tall grass of the clearing swayed gently, languidly, ignorant to the war in Johnny’s mind.

Taeyong had been chipper throughout the car ride; a far cry from the seriousness he had displayed back in Johnny’s room. This was something Johnny admired about the other man: unlike many other people he had met, who carried emotional weight around like ti was a brand, Taeyong was everything but tied down– he did not let things phase him for too long. He had a silent strength to him in the way he did not let his worries, concerns, and thoughts plague him. A trait that Johnny aspired. 

It was one of the first few times Johnny had brought Taeyong out in his car during the day, the other man visibly eager at the sight of the world around the cabin and the views of nature that he’d claimed to have never seen up close in broad daylight. Johnny had simply hummed in reply throughout, his brain still refusing to accept the fact that Taeyong had never felt rain on his skin.

By the time Johnny had pulled the car into park at a turn off, and they began walking through the forest in the direction of the clearing, Taeyong had finally grown quiet. Sensing Taeyong’s shift in energy, Johnny watched the other man walk ahead. It seemed as if he already knew exactly where he was going, so Johnny chose to let him take the lead. He was to trust him, after all.

The rubble Johnny had found Taeyong in looked exactly like how they had left it, save for the fact that the dust and smaller debris had finally settled. In the light of day, the scene looked less menacing and otherworldly, and more like just the mess it actually was. Upon closer inspection, Johnny noticed the texture of the rock– grey, granite, rough, with flecks of something silver and iridescent; oddly familiar, almost.

They were right next to the rubble now. Johnny stood still, watching Taeyong look at the mess of rock and debris with a quiet contemplation.

“Now what?” Johnny asked, feeling slightly on edge. He could not put a finger on why, but he felt the stirrings of unrest at the base of his chest. He felt ansty; uncomfortable. Out of his depth.

A beat of silence.

“Taeyong–,” Johnny began, frustrated.

Without a word, Taeyong took Johnny’s hands and placed them on the rock’s surface.

Suddenly, the world around them disappeared.

___________

When Johnny opens his eyes again, it is night. Johnny knows he’s in the clearing, but something is different– the grass is not as tall, the trees not as full. When he looks up, the sky is clear, the stars twinkling.

He’s stood at the far end, hidden by a line of trees. From where he’s stood, he sees a man emerge from the other side of the clearing, walking slowly, a red notebook and a telescope in hand.

Johnny wants to step closer, wants to see who the man is, wants to figure out why he looks so familiar.

“John-ah!” the man shouts, stopping Johnny in his tracks. Had he been spotted?

“Coming, Appa!” a young voice shouts back, followed by the appearance of a young boy, about six or seven years old. Dark black hair. Pronounced cupids bow. Feet that he had yet to grow into.

Johnny is seeing himself. Johnny is seeing his father.

 _Is this a memory?_ Johnny wonders to himself. _If it is, then why am I seeing it like this?_

Johnny watches the man, his father, smile down at the younger him. He looked excited. Ecstatic even.

“We’re about to see a shooting star, Johnny. We’ll get to see it land too. Are you excited?” his father asks him, his voice calm, but Johnny could hear the excitement underlying. Johnny doesn't ever recall a moment where he had seen his father this happy in his own waking life. _See it land?_ Johnny thought to himself.

“Super excited!” his younger self replies, practically buzzing, before suddenly settling himself, as if attempting to make himself seem calmer, like his father.

Johnny snorts, hearing his mother’s voice in his head. “You are so much more like your father than you realise,” she had said what felt like a lifetime ago now, days after his father’s funeral. 

_If only she knew,_ Johnny thought to himself. _If only she knew how much I wanted to be like him, growing up._

Johnny does not remember this happening, but he’s hardly surprised at this fact– in an effort to protect himself and protect his heart, Johnny had repressed so many of his memories over the years. Eventually, it became near impossible to distinguish fact from fiction. When his father had passed, and he had been in the height of his grief, he had attempted to draw on memories of his childhood with his father to find comfort and solace in. At the time, he had drawn up short; he could hardly remember what his father’s laugh sounded like.

However, now, in this moment, Johnny knew: this was not a dream. This had happened, and he was reliving it with a fresh set of eyes.

_But why?_

He hears the pair of them speaking; his father is explaining to his younger self what shooting stars are. Their voices were indistinct from where he stood, but the night was clear enough that sound carried easily, allowing Johnny to catch whispers of their hushed conversation.

“... travellers at sea would use constellations and stars to figure out where they were; how far they’d come, how much further they had to go,” he heard his father say.

“But what if they got lost? Or what if the star is wrong?” his younger self replied.

He did not hear his father’s reply, if his father replied at all. Instead, he watched as his father peered through his telescope, the set of his shoulders dropping as if a wave of exhaustion had overcome him. Johnny knew that feeling well– he was, after all, well acquainted with defeat.

Just then, a bright light began to track it’s way across the sky. It was close– close enough that it illuminated the pairs’ faces, making their expressions visible even from the distance Johnny was watching from. From his spot behind the tree line, Johnny watched his younger self exclaim in joy, watching the meteorite continue to fall and fall and fall, gaining speed but moving further away at the same time. It all moved so quickly. 

It was this bright light that also allowed Johnny to watch his father. What he saw shook him to his core.

As the meteorite fell further and further away from the clearing, the smile and expectation on his father’s face had slowly begun to disappear. Just as quickly as the meteorite appeared, it snuffed out in its descent in the sky, likely burning up far too hot upon entering the earth’s atmosphere. In any other case, Johnny would have assumed his father was just disappointed that the fall was so short. However, in the waning light of the meteorite, Johnny saw the utter devastation on his father’s face.

He watched his younger self look up to his father only to be silenced by the look he must have seen on his father’s face. The two twin tear tracks that fell down his father’s face, the way his face was turned up to the sky with his eyes closed. The red notebook was loose in his grip, barely holding on by his fingertips.

Johnny watched as his father began to walk back into the forest, his younger self dutifully following suit. He watched the downturned slump of his father’s head, the confusion setting into the bones of his younger self. He had spent his entire life wondering why his father looked as if he had been grieving that night.

_What did his father know?_

Johnny closed his eyes.

The next time Johnny opens his eyes, he finds himself standing in the living room of the cabin again. Like a ghost in the corner, he watches like a spectator. It looks to be late at night; all the lights are off, and there’s hardly any sounds save for the creaks and groans of the wood settling for the evening.

Not a moment later, Johnny hears a shuffling coming from the direction of his father’s study, followed by the man himself walking slowly. His every step looks as if it’s weighed down with lead. His eyes look empty, hollow. His shoulders slumped. He’d never seen his father look so defeated, so forlorn.

“Dad?” Johnny found himself saying out loud. 

His father did not reply. It was as if he had not heard him at all.

Another memory.

His father walked at a snail like pace until he reached the living room couch, setting himself down with a groan. His head hung between his shoulders. In his hands, the infamous red notebook was clutched like a lifeline.

Johnny remembers this memory vividly. In his adult life, he found himself revisiting it often. Johnny remembered his father as a man of few words; a man who preferred to _do_ rather than say. A man who wore little on his sleeve, and rarely let on what was on his mind. The complete antithesis of himself. It constantly boggled him, thus why this particular memory was so significant to him– it was the first and only time he’d ever seen his father cry.

Johnny watched with abject misery as his father’s body began to wrack with silent sobs. His cries, though quiet, carried with them the weight of the world. They were the tears of a man broken at his core. A man lost. A traveller endlessly adrift at sea, with no north star to guide him home. His tears fell onto the notebook cover, staining it dark red. _Like blood,_ Johnny remembers his younger self thinking.

No sooner than he remembers that, Johnny hears his own six year old voice speak out into the silence of the night; “Appa?” he says softly.

Johnny turns to look at his younger self standing at the edge of the living room. He looks afraid, and concerned. Johnny could not blame him; at six years old, his father had seemed like an immovable force. A man that could not be shaken. A rock that could withstand even the harshest of weather.

Six year old Johnny saw his father as everything but what he truly and really was: a broken and lost man, searching the stars for something he could no longer reach.

“Appa?” he hears his younger self repeat louder. He watches as his father looks up and sees him. He sees the way his father freezes up ever so slightly upon making eye contact with his younger self, as if he were ashamed at being caught during a moment of weakness. To have been caught in the throes of full fledged heartbreak.

Johnny sees his mother emerge from the hallway, watches her pull his younger self away with strict instructions to go back to bed. Focusing his attention back on his father, he watches him slump his head once again. From where he stood, Johnny could see the back of his fathers neck; he could see the glint of a silver chain.

Perplexed, he raises his hand to the pendant hung around his neck, rubbing at the surface on reflex. Coincidentally, he watches his father do the same– he lifts his hand to rub at the pendant attached to his own necklace. Johnny steps closer to his father’s hunched over figure to get a better view, figuring there’s no harm since he could not see or hear him anyway; he was a mere spectator.

He stops in his tracks, stunned.

It’s the same pendant. The same necklace that Johnny wore now, his father had hanging around his neck. His father rubbed at its surface for comfort the same way Johnny did.

_Where did he get it from?_

Just then, his mother reappears, having put his younger self back to bed for the night.

“What’s wrong, my love?” he hears his mother whisper quietly as she approaches his father, crouching down to be at eye level with him.

Johnny doesn’t remember much of his parent’s relationship before they had split, but what he did remember of it was that there was love, and that their love was pure, if not at times one sided.

Watching the way his mother approached his father, he put two and two together; his father had loved his mother, but not in the way she loved him. Not to the same extent. Something had held him back.

He watches as his father, in lieu of a reply, passes his red notebook to his wife. “Get this away from me,” he whispers, brokenly. “Please,” he adds like an afterthought, his father’s voice barely louder than a whisper.

“Did something happen? You’re scaring me, love,” his mother spoke fervently. “What can I do to make you feel better?” his mother added when his father did not reply.

His father merely shook his head, his body shaking harder and harder as his sobs grew in intensity. He was muttering something under his breath, but neither his mother nor Johnny himself could hear it clearly.

“I’ll go get you some water; please take deep breaths love, I’ll be right back,” his mother finally says when she realises she can’t get through to her husband. She’s never seen him like this– so distraught, so heartbroken; as if a part of him had just died, and he was not allowed to attend the funeral or pay his last respects.

Johnny watched as she walked away, the infamous red notebook in hand.

 _I have nothing to lose,_ Johnny thought to himself as he made his way to stand in front of his father, kneeling down to take the same spot his mother had crouched in moments ago. _He can’t see or hear me anyways,_ he added internally.

As he drew closer, the words his father had been muttering grew clearer and cleared.

“– see you again,” Johnny heard the tail end of his father’s sentence, watching as the tears flowed freely and he rocked back and forth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” his father continued, repeating it to himself like a mantra. He suddenly breathed in deeply, his spine straightening as he looked straight ahead, shocking Johnny from where he was crouched in front of him. From his father’s point of view, it just looked as if he was staring into dead air. However from where Johnny was crouched, it felt as if his father was looking directly into his eyes, straight into his soul.

“I’m never going to see you again,” his father whispered brokenly, his voice cracking.

He blinked, and a fresh set of tears fell down his cheeks. It took everything in Johnny’s willpower not to raise his own hand and wipe the tears off of his father’s cheeks, his heart aching at the sight of how broken his father was, even if he could not understand why.

“I’m sorry,” his father added, voice cracking.

Johnny raised his hand, reaching to cup his father’s face.

When he closed his eyes to blink, the world had turned black once again.

___________________

The final time Johnny had opened his eyes in this awful movie reel of memories playing out before him, he knew from the get-go that it was not a memory of his own.

He’s back in the clearing. In this memory, some of the trees are still young, some look as if they had yet to grow. The air smells cleaner, fresher. Like spring.

A young man in about his early 20s emerges from the tree line at the other end. He’s relatively tall, with floppy black hair and a dimpled smile. With him is a woman; she appears ageless, and is stunning in every way– long hair in a shocking shade of white, an aura that seemed to glow even from where Johnny stood, and most importantly, big bright eyes that looked as if they’d been sprinkled in star dust. She walked as if she was gliding just on the surface of the ground. The couple walked hand in hand to the middle of the clearing, the pair of them speaking to each other with their heads bowed in each other’s direction; as if they were the only two people in the world.

Johnny, curious, walked over to them to get a closer look and hear their conversation. If this memory worked anything like the other two, then he would not be seen or heard by either of them.

“Do you have to go?” he heard the man ask, his voice shaky with unshed tears– the timbre of it oddly familiar.

“I do, my love,” the woman replied. Her voice was clear and airy, like bells. She too, spoke familiarly. Johnny could not quite put his finger on it.

“When will I see you again?” the man asked. He sounded desperate, as if he could not bear the thought of a moment, let alone an undefined amount of time away from her.

“I will try my best to return,” she began, “... and if for whatever reason I do not, I promise you– we will meet again one way or another. Before you know it, time will have passed, and you will have come home to me, and I to you,” she said with a certainty that even Johnny felt convinced by. Her words were vague, but the spirit in which she spoke was fervent and unshakeable.

The man nodded, before pulling her in for a kiss, after which they embraced for what felt like an eternity.

Johnny could not understand– why was he seeing this memory? What was so significant about these two young lovers that he had to see it with his own eyes?

The woman pulled away first, looking up to the sky. “It’s time,” she said.

The man had begun crying at some point, his tears silently falling down his face.

The woman smiled patiently, her eyes filled with adoration for the man before her. Johnny could not help but feel like he was intruding, however he could not bring himself to pull his eyes away either.

“Do not shed your tears for me, my star. You must be strong. You must live your life. Aim for the skies. When the time comes, I will be there to meet you halfway,” she spoke softly.

“Here,” she added as she began to pull something out of her pocket. She tucked it into his hands as she held both of them in her own. “A piece of me to remember me by.”

“Like I could ever possibly forget you,” the man scoffed. The tears streaming down his face flowed freely at this point; he made no effort to hide them.

The woman smiled. “And I, you. My star, my love,” she spoke. “Close your eyes for me.”

The man took one long look at her. He traced the shape of her face with an intensity, as if he were attempting to permanently brand her visage onto the back of his eyelids; if he could have tattooed her on to his irises, he would have.

The man closed his eyes, his hands still clasped in hers. She slowly let his hands go, and took a small step back.

In stepping back, she turned to look in Johnny’s direction. As she did, she made eye contact with him and winked, a smile dancing on her lips. 

She could see him.

Just as that realisation sunk in, the world around them burst into a bright light that engulfed the clearing as a whole. Johnny closed his eyes, raising his arm to shield against the light’s intensity. When it finally subsided, Johnny opened his eyes to find the woman gone. The man stood alone, looking up at the sky, heartbreak evident in his eyes.

A familiar set of eyes. A familiar emotion. Instinctively, Johnny took closer steps to the man, drawn in by the way he reminded him of someone.

When he was close enough, he took a glance at what the man was looking down on, the gift his lover had left him with.

There, in the man’s palm; a granite pendant with a rough surface attached to a silver chain. Johnny gasped. 

Eyes shooting up to look at the man, Johnny could not stop himself from speaking out loud, regardless of whether he could be heard.

“Dad?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N - Trigger Warning: Panic attack
> 
> A portion of this chapter alludes to a character experiencing symptoms of a panic attack. Please read at your own caution, or skim through from the part starting “A beat of silence” until “Now, seated on the grass…”

When Johnny finally comes to, he is back in the clearing in present day. Standing in front of the rubble, his hands were flat on the rough surface of the rock. He felt the distinct feeling of his own tears running down his own cheeks– when had he started crying?

“I don’t understand,” Johnny said in between hiccups, his crying making him breathless. “You showed me all of that, and I get it, but why? Who was that woman? Where do you fit in?”

Taeyong took a step closer to Johnny, taking hold of his shaking hands.

“When I was a young star, for a period of time, an older star raised me. She taught me everything she knew,” he began. “Everything I understand not just about the universe but about humans and life on earth, she told me. She had been around for so long. Far longer than any other star I knew. From her spot in the cosmos, she had seen the universe grow, watched your planet appear and flourish. She’d seen civilizations rise and fall. She had seen all this from a distance up until one day, when she decided that enough was enough– she wanted to experience the earth for herself.

You see, she was fascinated by humans and the human race; she found people on this planet to be amazing creatures, with a capability for passion, love, and care that extended beyond any other entity in the universe. This fascination was further bolstered when upon landing, she met your father, and they fell in love.”

“Huh?” Johnny said unintelligibly, for lack of better word.

“She, by the standards of human time, did not spend a long time on earth– a month at best,” Taeyong continued without stopping. “However, in the skies, relativity was taking its toll. For every day she spent on earth, an indispensable amount of time would pass in her spot in the sky. The more she stayed on earth, the longer her star continued to burn dimmer and dimmer. If she wanted to have a fighting chance at returning to earth again one day while your father was still alive, she could not stay any longer,”.

“When the time finally came, as you saw in the final memory, she returned to her spot in the sky where she was reunited with me. By the time she had returned, I was already an older star, wiser in my years. For her, however, her days were numbered. Her time on earth had taken its toll on her energy supplies. But that did not stop her; she had returned to the skies with a plan.”

Johnny stood quiet now, listening attentively.

“She told me of her grand plan to return in time to see your father before anything untoward were to happen to him. You have to understand, Johnny; in the same way humans die, so do stars. We extinguish, we burn out; we all have our time. She had aimed for the day she returned to earth to see your father again to be well before the day she’d extinguished, but like how it is with humans, we do not know the day nor the time of when we will go. We only know that when we eventually do, we will go burning bright,”.

Taeyong paused, attempting to recollect himself.

“The first memory you saw. The night when you were six. You saw a falling star extinguish before it could reach earth. Do you remember?” Taeyong asked slowly. Johnny simply nodded; words eluded him. “That was her. She did not make it.” Taeyong supplied. His voice was steeled.

There was a pregnant pause, as Johnny’s mind ran wild attempting to piece together all the parts of the story being laid out before him.

“And my father… he knew this?” Johnny asked incredulously. It had to have been a coincidence they were there that night, right?

Taeyong nodded his head, a small smile on his face. “Your father had grown to be an incredible man in the years after the two of them had parted ways. The way he had devoted his life to searching and studying the stars in hope that he would find her; it was a lost cause, but he tried his best until eventually, he figured out a way to pin-point exactly when he would see her again. I don't know how he did it, but he did.” Taeyong spoke as he shook his head in disbelief.

Immediately, the red notebook is brought to the forefront of Johnny’s mind. His father’s calculations that made no sense to anyone but himself. Figuring out the probability of another shooting star landing at the very clearing they had said goodbye to each other at.

_Given the right conditions, anything is possible. Never forget that._

“But he got it wrong, didn’t he?” Johnny asked rhetorically. “She burned out, he never saw her again, and he knew he never would; that’s why he was so heartbroken that night,”. The pieces of the puzzle were finally coming together, and Johnny hated it. He hated what he saw.

Taeyong simply nodded. “She did not account for how close she was to the end of her life cycle. By the time she had set off back to earth, it was too late. She went peacefully; in a way, she expected it,”.

Johnny was silent for a moment, searching for the right words to say, when something tugged at his brain.

Looking up at Taeyong, Johnny met him head on and stared dead into his eyes– “So why are _you_ here, Taeyong?”

For a moment, Taeyong simply stared back, before answering quietly; “I made her a promise, Johnny. I promised her that if she failed in coming back here, that I would come in her place to make sure that the man she left behind was well and okay,”.

A beat of silence.

The resentment and betrayal in Johnny’s heart began to bubble up to the surface– “Well, you’re too late, Taeyong. He’s not well. He’s not okay. My dad is gone.”

“Johnny–” Taeyong tried to interrupt.

“No.” Johnny countered back. “He doesn’t get to do this. He’s _gone_ Taeyong, he’s been ripped from my fucking life and all he’s left behind are unanswered questions and so much heartache. She left him behind, and so he decided to pay that fucking trauma forward and leave _me_ behind too?” 

Johnny could feel himself shaking, his entire being vibrating with pent up emotion. Months and months of grief from his father’s death built upon a foundation of years worth of resentment and abandonment that stemmed from his father leaving him and his mum. All these years, he had the irrational fear that maybe he was to blame; maybe he was the bad guy in the equation– the reason his father could no longer cope with their family. It didn’t necessarily make sense, but when there was hardly anything else to go off of, Johnny had to fill the gaps with something.

“Johnny, I’m sorry–” Taeyong began, but Johnny could only shake his head, unable to hear a thing.

“It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair, Taeyong,” Johnny speaks softly. His body continued to shake as tears began to fall freely. “Even in death, my heart still breaks for him. How is this fair for me? When will I heal? When will he let me heal?”

Johnny attempted to continue, but he became so overwhelmed with emotions that all he could do was shake. He collapsed into a heap on the ground, as his sobs coursed through his body. He could hear someone heaving in between their cries; it took him a moment to realise that it was his own voice.

An indiscernible amount of time passed; as Johnny attempted to calm himself down, he felt arms wrap around him, enveloping him in an embrace so tender and caring that all he could do was cry a little more, overwhelmed. Taeyong held him close, pulling him to sit against his chest as if Johnny were a young child needing consolation. In many ways, maybe he was. The child in him that watched his father walk out on him and his mum had not properly healed. The son in him that had watched his estranged father fall into and eventually succumb to illness had not yet properly grieved. Johnny had been holding on to all this baggage, all this emotional pain and hurt because he could not find the closure he needed. Not until everything had been properly explained. Not until now.

Now, seated on the grass in the middle of a clearing that had seen two generations of Suh men pour their hearts out, being embraced by the first person, the first entity he’d ever truly felt as himself with, Johnny came to a sobering realisation: he could finally move on. It would be painful living with this truth, knowing that for the majority of his life, his own father, despite building a family and having him, had loved someone else. It would be even more painful, knowing that his father had left without ever feeling like he could talk about this to anyone. That he felt the need to hold these secrets so close to his chest, to the point where they grew and expanded, creating an invisible barrier between his heart and everyone around him.

_No other way but through._

“Thank you,” Johnny blurted out to Taeyong, wiping at his eyes as his tears began to subside.

Taeyong gently wiped at the tears Johnny failed to wipe away himself, his eyebrows raising in lieu of a question.

Johnny simply shook his head, a rueful smile playing at his face; “Thank you for the truth, and for being kind, and for keeping your word,” Johnny said softly. He felt winded.

Taeyong took a hold of Johnny’s hands. “I am not to be thanked; if anything, I should be thankful,” he added with a smile. “Everything that has happened, everything said and done, has led me to you. If anything were different, I may have never had the chance to be part of your life, your world. I regret nothing, Johnny. I hope you can bring yourself to feel the same way,”.

Johnny nodded– maybe he could. No other way but through.

_________________

Crawling into bed after the day he’d had, Johnny felt drained– exhausted both emotionally and physically. He longed for nothing but sleep. What he did not expect was to find Taeyong crawling into bed with him, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. In a way, it felt like it was; the extent to which Taeyong’s presence was grounding and calming to him was no longer a surprise to either of them.

Taeyong embraced him once more, rubbing soothing circles into Johnny’s back as he curled into his chest.

“Can I be honest with you, Johnny?” Taeyong suddenly asks, just as Johnny is slipping into sleep. Johnny hums in reply.

“I don’t quite understand what love is, or desire even,” he begins slowly, as if he’s figuring his thoughts out as he went along. “I did not share the same love for humanity that the star who raised me did; I did not see the merits of deep affection. I was sure that feeling so much for something or someone would only open up one’s heart further to the possibility of getting hurt. And in a way, maybe I am right. Maybe I am on a path to destruction,” Taeyong mused. Johnny finally looked up, getting a good look at Taeyong’s face. His gaze was far away.

“But I’ll tell you this: I know how nice it feels to be held by you, and to hold you in return. How nice it feels to be touched and explored by you. How amazing it feels when you look at me, when you smile at me. It warms my heart when you are patient with me and explain things I don’t understand. It comforts me when you humour my odd requests.”

“What are you trying to say, Taeyong?” Johnny asked, now significantly more awake.

A pause– “I’m saying, Johnny, that while I may not understand what love is, I understand how I feel about you, and how you make me feel. And if that’s love, then that’s it. I just wanted you to know,” Taeyong explained. “You deserve to know.” 

Johnny was stunned; while it was sudden, in a way, he was also unsurprised. Johnny knew from the minute he brought Taeyong home that evening that the man was fascinating. That fascination only grew brighter with every passing day they spent together. A week is hardly any time to fall in love, and while Johnny echoed Taeyong’s sentiments in the way he was, to a certain extent, unsure of how he felt for the other man, he knew that his candle would always hold a flame for him. In just the span of a week, Taeyong had managed to carve a space out for himself in Johnny’s heart; Taeyong smiled when Johnny said as much in reply.

“Where’s all this coming from, though?” Johnny asked, turning his body to face Taeyong fully, who was also lying on his side. They mirrored each other; two parallel paths, one a reflection of the other.

“I know the days you have left in this cabin are numbered Johnny. You have a life to return to. Obligations and commitments and people who love you and wait on you. In that same grain, my days on this earth are numbered too. Every day I spend in this form, I grow older, and my star grows weaker. If I wish to return to you one day, then I must leave soon. I will not repeat the mistakes of the star who raised me. I want to see you again.”

Johnny was silent. In a way, he had seen this coming from the get-go. He knew there was no way Taeyong could return to New York with him, as much as he would have loved it. There were too many bars to entry, too many questions he had no answers to. Similarly, there was no way he could continue staying on in the cabin any further. He had stalled for time long enough; any longer, and he would have to start lying through the skin of his teeth to the people he loved and cared for the most. They deserved better than that– he deserved better than that.

All of this, Johnny was aware of in theory. However, it did not help that his heart ached deeply. If he had it his way, he would shut out the rest of the world forever, living the remainder of his days in this cabin with Taeyong, the both of them blissful in their little bubble. He could be happy. They could be happy together.

But one thing Johnny had learned through all of this, was that happiness, while the ultimate goal, was not always the method. In reaching that goal, there is pain, there is sacrifice, there is hardship. That was reality, and by virtue of his scientific background, Johnny wanted to focus on what was real. 

In lieu of a reply, Johnny pulled Taeyong closer by the waist, until the space between them became negligible. A chaste kiss that built, and then more, and then some– desperate tugs against clothing, words of comfort that turned into sighs; Johnny drew Taeyong closer and closer and closer until Taeyong and him were one; where he ended, Taeyong began. Where Taeyong ended, Johnny began. Taeyong. Johnny. Taeyong. Johnny. TaeyongJohnnyTaeyongJohnny. Their lives had been tethered to each other well before they knew of one another– to tether now, like this, was the most natural progression of events.

Happiness remained the ultimate goal, but for this night, at this moment, happiness was this: bliss tangible in his arms and on his skin, warm, and oh so real. 

Happiness carried on until morning; dawn found the two of them intertwined, wrapped up under layers of comfort, with sheets strewn about. In their bubble, nothing could harm them. In their bubble, they were safe.

The bubble burst with a knock on the front door.

With a shared glance, Johnny pulled himself out of bed, picking up his clothes that had been thrown to the ground in haste the night before, pulling them back on. When he answered the door, he was welcomed by the sight of Yuta and Mark stood on his porch, a dish of food in hand and eagle eyes zeroing in on Johnny’s bed hair and the marks lining his throat.

Mark began to laugh, while Yuta simply rolled his eyes– “It’s a good thing I’ve made enough food for four then,” he remarks, letting himself in.

The three were seated at Johnny’s kitchen table, discussing Johnny’s plans and his upcoming flight back to New York when Taeyong emerged from the hallway, dressed in Johnny’s clothes but nonetheless looking a lot more put together than Johnny did.

“Hello,” he begins gently, “I’m Taeyong, Johnny’s neighbour.”

Yuta raised his eyebrows, while Mark full on choked out a “Holy shit, you’re pretty,” his brain to mouth filter clearly on vacation. This remark was met with Yuta replying, “I, your husband, am literally sitting _right here_ ,” before adding, “though I must agree, you _are_ pretty,”. 

Taeyong simply laughed it off, taking it in stride.

The rest of breakfast goes along the same grain, with Taeyong managing to successfully deflect questions about his personal life while simultaneously winning Yuta and Mark over. Before leaving, Yuta pulled Johnny aside. 

“Bring him over if you’re swinging by to ours before your flight, okay? We like him.” Yuta said conspritally. Johnny hardly had the heart to tell him that by this time tomorrow, Taeyong would simply exist as a gas ball thousands of lightyears away– that the Taeyong all of them are seeing today will become a mere figment in the years to come.

So instead, all Johnny could reply with was a sweet, ‘Sure, Yuta. I’ll ask him.”

For the remainder of their years, neither Yuta or Mark would see or hear of Taeyong again; they would simply remember him as “that one guy Johnny-hyung had seemed really happy and blissed out to be around; I guess they didn’t work out,”.

Johnny had never been the type to have problems with saying goodbye. Contrary to his demeanor, Johnny was inherently optimistic; he worked under the notion that most goodbyes were temporary.

But this one wasn’t. At least, not with full certainty.

In the evening, Johnny found himself back in the clearing with Taeyong upon his request. They stood before each other in silence, drinking in each other's image. Johnny didn't want to ever forget what Taeyong looked like, how his eyes shone, the way his cheeks dimpled ever so slightly when he smiled.

Abruptly, Johnny felt himself overcome with emotion. He pulled Taeyong closer, hugging him with a fervor, as if Taeyong were a lifeline and he was on borrowed breath.

“I will never forget you, Taeyong,” Johnny whispered into Taeyong’s ear, holding him closer still. Taeyong did not comment on the tears that fell on his shoulder.

In lieu of a reply, Taeyong simply pulled Johnny in closer, gripping the fabric of Johnny’s jacket as if it would keep him tethered to the earth. “While I don't deny that I will never forget you either, promise me something,” he said firmly. When Johnny nodded, he continued; "Promise me that you will live a full life. The best life you could possibly lead. I want you to be happy, to heal. That would be the greatest gift of all to me."

Johnny wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, “I promise," the said gently before moving to take Taeyong’s hands in his; "This is a little something for you to remember me by then. Consider it your promise; return it to me when you come back,” Johnny said as he slipped the silver chain and granite pendant into Taeyong’s hands; “I'll be here when you do.”.

Taeyong nodded in reply, tears pooling in his own eyes. Johnny was quick to wipe them away with his sleeve, making Taeyong smile. If he could, Johnny would have his smile archived and held as national treasure to ensure that its image was preserved. But no, this smile was for him and only him– that was the greatest treasure of all.

Taeyong leaned in, pressing a kiss on to Johnny’s lips. At the end of the kiss, Johnny moved to rest both their foreheads against each other.

“Close your eyes,” Taeyong spoke softly, his own eyes boring into Johnny’s.

For a moment, Johnny continued looking into Taeyong’s eyes, the moment suspended in time at the thought of everything he had learned and unlearned over the past week, the role Taeyong had played in all of it.

In many ways, Taeyong had been his saving grace. In other ways, Taeyong made clear all the reasons why Johnny wanted to save himself.

Looking into Taeyong’s eyes, with this moment suspended in time, Johnny promised himself: he was going to start living the life Taeyong would want him to lead. A life for himself.

“Thank you, Taeyong,” Johnny whispered out loud, before closing his eyes. 

Taeyong didn’t say anything. Johnny felt the press of a chaste kiss on each of his eyelids, and then suddenly, a bright light engulfed the clearing. Johnny stood as still as possible until the light dissipated.

When he opened his eyes, Taeyong was gone, nothing but the wind to echo that he had ever been there. When he looked up, he saw one star shining particularly bright in comparison to the others.

His father’s voice echoed; _“You’d be surprised, John-ah. There’s much more to the stars than what meets the eye.”_

_________________

Easing back into his routine in New York proved to be a lot easier than Johnny expected. He taught his classes, graded papers, supervised his dissertation students, worked on his own research, and dealt with the run of the mill office bureaucracy. Navigating Doyoung, however, was another story.

Johnny chose not to expand too much on Taeyong, keeping his stories about the other man as superficial and minimal as possible. What he had not accounted for was how truly difficult it was to lie to someone who knew you better than you knew your own self. That someone, in this case, was none other than Kim Doyoung.

“Cut the crap, Suh,” Doyoung suddenly said to him one evening while they were out having coffee, waiting for Jaehyun to get off work so that the three of them could meet for dinner together. “Something happened to you while you were there; something good. And I know it must have something to do with that Taeyong guy– every time he comes up in conversation, you practically glow. As your best friend and future best man, it is your duty to tell me these things. In full detail. Spare _nothing_.”

Johnny snorted, finding joy and comfort in Doyoung’s lack of filter. He took a sip of coffee to buy himself some time, contemplating how to best approach this. Doyoung, impatient, made a flopping hand gesture, as if telling him to get a move on with it.

“Nothing grand, Doyoung– really! Don’t look at me like that!” Johnny exclaimed.

“Listen,” Johnny continued, growing quieter as he thought of the best way to word this; “For the short amount of time we spent together, he made me happy, Dons. He is so kind, so giving. He is generous in his affections and words because he has nothing to lose. He is not selfish with his emotions; he allows himself to feel. He taught me what it means to want happiness, not just for others, but for myself,” Johnny said, before pausing. “He made me want to be better for _me_ ; that’s the greatest gift of all,”

Johnny may not know much, and he attests to this often, citing that in a world full of things yet to be discovered and hypotheticals yet to be proven, there couldn’t possibly be any form of conclusion. But, if there was one thing he knows for sure, one thing he knows with a certainty that thrums through every fibre of his being and surpasses any logic or human understanding, it’s this: when the Sun eventually swallows the earth whole, and the world as he knows it burns it’s way through the cosmos, one thing will be constant— 

Taeyong will be somewhere out there, whether it be as a star, or dust floating through the galaxy. Taeyong will be there, and will be waiting for him to come home.

Doyoung was silent for a moment, before replying quietly; “He sounds amazing, hyung,” he says with a genuine smile. Doyoung has always wanted what was best for Johnny. To know that there was a kindred spirit out there who felt the same must have brought him peace. 

Johnny smiled, nodding in agreement. “He is,”.

He is. 


	6. Epilogue

_“That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”_

― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

60 years later

The beauty of life, Johnny attests, is that it demands to be lived, unabashedly, without fear, with the acknowledgement that sometimes things don’t go the way you expect, and to make peace with that.

If Johnny were to split his life into parts, it would be the years before Taeyong, and the years after. In the years before Taeyong, Johnny had felt aimless; like a boat adrift at sea, his anchor ripped away from him before he could have ever conceptualized that he needed one to begin with. In the years after Taeyong, Johnny had found purpose. Most importantly, that purpose was not Taeyong himself, but the desire to know that if Taeyong were to ever be watching him from wherever in the universe he may be, that Taeyong would be reassured that he was doing alright, and that he was trying the best for himself, whatever the best may be.

It was the weekend of Johnny’s 86th birthday. He was back at the cabin he inherited from his father all those years ago. The cabin where it all started. This time, the cabin felt alive, the air singing with the voices of the family he had built for himself. His walls were adorned with photos old and new. Photos of him, his husband, their children. Photos of his mother when she was still alive playing with her grandkids. Photos of Yuta and Mark with their baby girl attached to Mark’s hip. Photos of Doyoung and Jaehyun at their wedding where Johnny was best man, photos of a tearful Doyoung at Johnny’s own wedding, where Doyoung was his best man. A photo of the day his first grandchild was born.

All along the walls were records of a life lived with love. A life lived to the fullest, a life with happiness as the ultimate goal. 

A life lived with a promise kept in the back of his mind throughout.

With age, Johnny’s health had been waning; he knew he was on his way out, and he accepted it with content. While he couldn’t go on as long walks anymore, and he used a walking stick more often than not, he could still remember the days where he would walk for hours on end, dragging Yuta on hikes, or exploring new cities with Doyoung. While his physical body had begun to fail him, Johnny’s mind was still sharp. He still remembered well.

He remembered everything.

Over the years, the cabin had been renovated as well. Its foundations fortified to last longer, while the rooms and halls underwent expansion over the years to accommodate Johnny’s ever growing family. Joy and life were ingrained into the walls. As it should have always been, and as it will continue to be. 

One last thing though. 

That night, as the house quietened, when Johnny was sure his husband was fast asleep in bed beside him, he slowly got up, put on a thick coat, and ambled his way out the door and into his car, making a slow drive.

Drawing from an unknown source of strength, Johnny made his way to the clearing he remembered so well, retracing steps and following the now overgrown path he had cleared himself all those years ago. This was merely out of habit. For 60 years, every time he returned to the cabin, he made it a point to visit the clearing. The first few years, he went with expectation, certain that every year would be _the_ year Taeyong came back. As the years progressed, and no sign of the man he knew showed, Johnny learned to manage that expectation against the fact that Taeyong was wise, and to trust him. He would know the right time to return.

As he walked slowly into the clearing, Johnny felt there was a charge in the air. An energy that reminded him of that one night many many years ago, when he first returned to Vancouver, when he first lost his father— cicadas, the wind rustling, a crescendo and then silence.

A bright light streaked across the sky above Johnny, momentarily blinding him before he was plunged into darkness once more. He closed his eyes, his age having made them sensitive.

 _Welcome,_ the wind seemed to whisper, _we've been expecting you,_ the trees seemed to sing.

A pause.

“You can open your eyes now, Johnny,” Taeyong whispered.

_“The stars are never wrong. One way or another, they always lead the lost home.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've made it this far: thank you for reading! This has been my baby and my burden for the better part of 3 months. 
> 
> Do say hi on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/john___suh)
> 
> On a final note, I leave you with a little cookie: the character arc in this work was inspired by the movie, Ad Astra.
>
>> _I'm steady, calm. I slept well, no bad dreams. I am active and engaged. I'm aware of my surroundings and those in my immediate sphere. I'm attentive. I am focused on the essentials, to the exclusion of all else. I'm unsure of the future but I'm not concerned. I will rely on those closest to me, and I will share their burdens, as they share mine. I will live and love._
>> 
>> \- Roy McBride, Ad Astra (2019) dir. James Gray
>>
>>> 


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